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SCIENCE FICTION

NOVEMBER 1955

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NOVEMBER, 1955 VOL. 11, NO. 2

Galaxy

SCIENCE FICTION

ALL ORIGINAL STORIES • NO REPRINTS!

CONTENTS

TWO-PART SERIAL — Installment 1

THE TIES OF EARTH by James H. Schmitz 6

NOVELETS

AUTOFAC by Philip K. Dick 70

WITH REDFERN ON CAPELLAXII by Charles Satterf, eld 120

SHORT STORIES

THE SEMANTIC WAR by Bill Clothier 48

CAUSE OF DEATH by Max Tadlock 96

WARRIOR'S RETURN by Robert Sheckley 107

SCIENCE DEPARTMENT

FOR YOUR INFORMATION by Willy Ley 57

FEATURES

EDITOR'S PAGE by H. L. Gold 4

GALAXY'S FIVE STAR SHELF by Floyd C. Gale 103

FORECAST .• 119

Cover by EMSH Illustrating THE TIES OF EARTH

ROBERT GUINN, Publisher H. L. GOLD, Editor

EVELYN PAIGE, Managing Editor WILLY LEY, Science Editor

W. I. VAN DER POEL, Art Director JOAN De MARIO, Production Manager

GALAXY Science Fiction is published monthly by Galaxy Publishing Corporation. Main offices:
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year in the United States, Canada, Mexico, South and Central America and U.S. Possessions.
Elsewhere $4.50. Entered as second-class matter at the Post Office, New York, N. Y. Copyright,
New York 1955, by Galaxy Publishing Corporation, Robert Guinn, president. All rights, includ-
ing translation, reserved. All material submitted must be accompanied by self-addressed stamped
envelopes. The publisher assumes no responsibility for unsolicited material. All stories printed in
this magazine are fiction, and any similarity between characters and actual persons is coincidental.

Printed in the U.S.A. by the Guinn Co., Inc. Title Reg. U.S. Pat. Off.

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WHO'LL BE AROUND?

T HE question of racial survival
is understandably on people’s
minds. However, before the al-
phabet-bombs made it a more
immediate problem, researchers
were wondering whether we’d do
as well as the dinosaurs, who
earned a handsome living for
over 100,000,000 years — and
don’t think they were in a low-
rental area either.

We’ve been around less than
1,000,000 years and yet, these
researchers have long been ask-
ing, how soon will Man be re-
placed . . . and by what?

In the Scientific American
Reader (Simon 8s Schuster), a
typical article, called “Is Man
Here to Stay?’’ by Loren C. Eise-
ley, gives all the facts except the
one I think is crucial and so can-
not draw the most probable con-
clusion.

Dr. Eiseley offers a valid and
yet misleading conflict: “There is
a widespread tendency to con-
ceive of the course of evolution
as an undeviating upward march
from the level of very simple or-
ganisms to much more complex
ones . . . the confusion lies in
the fact that we fail to distinguish

adequately between progressive
evolution in a single family line
and those greater movements
which adjust life to the rise and
fall of continents or the chill
winds of geological climate.”
Versus : “Yet as one compares
the durability of the simpler crea-
tures with that of the more ef-
ficient, one may be led to com-
ment cynically that to evolve is
to perish . . . obviously the com-
pletely inadaptive organism can-
not master a shifting environ-
ment. Life must evolve to live.
Why, then, are we confronted
with the paradox that he who
evolves perishes? Are we not the
highest animal? And what, among
all things that fly or creep or
crawl, is more likely to inherit
the future than we are?”

Dr. Eiseley then quotes “the
law of the unspecialized,” a con-
tribution of Edward Drinker
Cope, the great 19th century
Quaker naturalist:

“The highly developed, or
specialized types of one geologi-
cal period have not been the
parents of the types of succeeding
periods but . . . the descent has
been derived from the less spe-

GALAXY SCIENCE FICTION

cialized of preceding ages.”

If there’s any confusion about
the term “unspecialized,” George
Gaylord Simpson’s The Meaning
of Evolution explains: “It has
been suggested that all animals
are now specialized and that the
generalized forms on which major
evolutionary developments de-
pend are now absent. In fact all
animals have been more or less
specialized, and a really general-
ized living form is merely a myth.
It happens that there are still in
existence some of the less special-
ized — that is, less narrowly ad-
apted and more adaptable —
forms from which radiations have
occurred and could, as far as we
can see, occur again. Opossums
are not notably more specialized
now than in the Cretaceous and
could almost certainly radiate
again markedly.”

Why do very specialized fprms
become extinct? When catas-
trophe of one sort or another
strikes, the form can’t adapt to
the changed environment. Dr.
Eiseley’s example is the anteater
that starves' when ants grow
scarce, even though there is an
abundance of food for less spe-
cialized animals.

Three more quotations and I’ll
get to my own point. Darwin pre-
dicted: “We may look with some
confidence to a future of great
length ... All corporeal and men-
tal endowments will tend to pro-

gress toward perfection.” But that
follows right after this: “Of the
species now living very few will
transmit progeny of any kind to
a far distant future.”

Can these two statements be
accepted simultaneously? It isn’t
easy, but I believe they can. Dr.
Eiseley asks: “Is Man a special-
ized or a generalized creature?”
The answer, it seems to me, is a
contradictory yes — he’s both.

The true divisions of mankind
are not racial, national or reli-
gious. They’re the aptitude groups.
The most extreme specializations
appear to be the idiot savants,
who can’t feed or clothe them-
selves, but can do one thing su-
premely well. If they are the end-
product of our present trends, it’s
not hard to imagine them be-
coming extinct through inability
to adapt to some drastic change.

Is that good-by to Man? No,
for there is the more generalized
bulk of the species, far outnum-
bering the increasingly narrowly
specialized, and very well able to
adapt to perhaps any change
short of complete racial destruc-
tion.

And, I suppose,- capable of ra-
diating into forms we can’t even
imagine now, if the last part of
Darwin’s prediction is to come
true.

Is this what he meant? I wish
he had given us a bit of a clue.

— H. L. GOLD

WHO'LL BE AROUND?

The Ties of

What was happening to Commager did worse
than make no sense — it made too much sense
— but which was true and which was not?

PART 1 OF A 2-PART SERIAL

T HE HAWKES residence
lay in a back area of Bev-
erly Hills, south of Wil-
shire and west of La Brea. It was
a big house for that neighbor-
hood, a corner house set back
from the street on both sides and
screened by trellises, walls and
the flanks of a large garage.

“That’s the number,” Jean Bo-
hart said, “but don’t stop. Drive
on at least a block. . .”

Alan Commager pointed out
that there ' was parking space
right in front of the house.

“I know,” Jean agreed nervous-
ly, “but if we park there, some-
body inside the house would no-

GALAXY SCIENCE FICTION

Earth

By JAMES H. SCHMITZ

Illustrated by EMSH

tice us and that would spoil the
main purpose of our trip.”

“You mean,” said Commager
as he drove on obediently, “they’ll
fold the black altar out of sight,
drop the remains of the sacrificed
virgin through a trap door and
hose out the blood, while we’re
stumbling across the dichondra?

I thought we were expected.”
“We’re not expected till ten-
thirty,” Jean said. “Ira didn’t
exactly make a point of it, but
he mentioned they’d be doing
other work till shortly after ten.”
“Then I come on with the dice,
eh? By the way, I didn’t bring
any along. Would these Guides

THE TIES OF EARTH

keep sordid little items like that
around?”

“It isn’t going to be a crap
game, silly,” Jean informed him.
“I told you Ira thinks these peo-
ple can tell whether you were
just lucky last week or whether
you’ve developed some sort of
special ability. They’ll test you
— somehow.”

/^OMMAGER looked down at
her curiously. Jean was a
slim blonde who could look crisp
as chilled lettuce after an after-
noon of smashing tennis matches
followed by an hour of diving
practice off the high board. She
wasn’t intellectually inclined, but,
understandably, Ira Bohart had
never seemed to mind that.
Neither did Commager. However,
she seemed disturbed now.

“Are you beginning to get in-
terested in that sort of thing
yourself?” he inquired lightly.

“No,” she said. “I’m just wor-
ried about that husband of mine.
Honestly, Alan, this is as bad a
metaphysical binge as he’s ever
been on! And some of those exer-
cises he was showing me yester-
day sort of scared me. If they
do something like that tonight,
I’d like to know what you think
of it.”

“It’s just somebody else ort the
trail of the Bohart stocks and
bonds, Jeannie! Ira will get dis-
illusioned again before any harm

is done. You know that, Jeannie.”

“That’s what I keep telling my-
self,” Jean agreed unhappily. “But
this time — ”

Commager shook his head,
parked the car and let her out,
a block and a half from the
Hawkes home. “Did you try any
of those exercises yourself?”

“I’m not that loony,” Jean said
briefly. “Anyway, Ira advised me
not to.”

They walked back to the house
in brooding silence. Between
them, they’d seen Ira through a
bout of Buddhism and successive
experiences with three psycho-
logical fringe groups, in relentless
pursuit of some form of control
of the Higher Mind. After each
such period, he would revert for
a while to despondent normalcy.

Four years ago, it had seemed
rather amusing to Commager, be-
cause then it had been Lona
Commager and Ira Bohart who
went questing after the Inex-
pressible together, while Alan
Commager and Jean Bohart went
sea-fishing or skin-diving off
Catalina. But then Lona had died
and the Inexpressible stopped be-
ing a source of amusement. Some-
times Ira bored Commager to
death these days. But he still
liked Jean.

W 'W HY PICK on me to ex-
” pose these rascals any-
way?” he asked as they came in

GALAXY SCIENCE FICTION

s’ght of the house. “I may have
surprised the boys at Las Vegas
last week, but I couldn’t tell a
psychic phenomenon from a ring-
ing in my ears.”

She patted his arm. “That may
be true, but you do intimidate
people,” she explained.

“Shucks!” Commager said mod-
estly. It was true, though; he did.
“So I’m to sit there and glare
at them?”

“That’s the idea. Just let them
know you see through their little
tricks and I’ll bet they lose in-
terest in Ira before the evening’s
out! Of course, you don’t have to
put it on too thick. . .”

Their host, Herbert Hawkes,
for one, didn’t look like a man
who’d be easy to intimidate. He
was as big as Commager himself
and about the same age; an ex-
football player, it turned out. He
and Commager exchanging crush-
ing hand-grips and soft smiles, as
big men will, and released each
other with mutual respect.

Ira, who didn’t seem any more
gaunt and haggard than usual,
had appeared a little startled by
their entry, possibly because they
were early, but more likely, Com-
mager thought, because of a girl
who had coiled herself becom-
ingly on the couch very close to
Ira.

At first glance, this siren
seemed no more than seventeen
— a slender, brown-skinned crea-

ture in an afternoon dress the
exact shade of her skin — but
by the time they were being in-
troduced, Commager had added
twelve years to her probable age.

She was Ruth MacDonald, she
told him, secretary of the Para-
psychological Group of Long
Beach. Had he heard of it? He
said it sounded familiar, which
was untrue, but it seemed to
please Miss MacDonald.

The only other person present,
a fifty-odd, graying teddy-bear of
a man with very thick eyebrows,
announced he was the Reverend
Wilson Knox, president of the
Temple of Antique Christianity.
The Reverend, Commager real-
ized, was pretty well plastered,
though there was no liquor in
sight.

rpHEIR INTERESTS might be
unusual, but they hardly
seemed sinister. Commager was
practically certain he could iden-
tify Herbert Hawkes as the
owner of one of the biggest down-
town automobile agencies —
which made him an unlikely sort
of man to be a member of a
group called the Guides. It was
Hawkes’s own affair, but it prom-
ised to make the evening more
interesting than Commager had
expected.

“Were we interrupting any-
thing?” he inquired, looking
around benevolently.

THE TIES OF EARTH

Ira cleared his throat. “Well,
as a matter of fact, Alan, we
were conducting a series of ex-
periments with me as the guinea-
pig at the moment. Rather inter-
esting actually — ” He seemed a
trifle nervous.

Commager avoided Jean’s
glance. “Why not just continue?”
“We can’t,” the Reverend
Knox informed him solemnly.
“Our high priestess was called to
the telephone a few minutes ago.
We must wait until she returns.”
Ira explained hurriedly, “Mr.
Knox is talking about Paylar.
She’s connected with the new
group I’m interested in, the
Guides. I suppose Jean told you
about that?”

“A little.” Commager waved
his hand around. “But I thought
you people were the Guides.”
Hawkes smiled.

Wilson Knox looked startled.
“Goodness, no, Mr. Commager!
Though as a matter of fact — ”
he glanced somewhat warily at
his two companions — - “if some-
one here were a Guide, that per-
son would be the only one who
knew it! And, of course, Paylar.
That’s right, isn’t it, Ruth?”

Miss MacDonald nodded and
looked bored.

Jean said to Ira, “All I really
told Alan was that some friends
of yours would like to experi-
ment with — well, whatever you
think he was using in that crap

game last week.” She smiled
brightly at the group. “Mr. Com-
mager actually won eleven hun-
dred dollars in fifteen minutes of
playing!”

“Ah, anybody could if they
kept the dice for fifteen minutes,”
Commager said airily. “Question
of mind over matter, you know.”
“Eleven hundred dollars? Phe-
nomenal!” Wilson Knox came
wide awake. “And may I ask, sir,
whether you employ your powers
as a professional gambler?”

Commager replied no, that
professionally he was a collector,
importer, wholesaler and retailer
of tropical fish. Which was, as it
happened, the truth, but the Rev-
erend looked suspicious.

A DOOR opened then and two
other people came in. One
was a handsome though sullen-
faced young man whose white-
blond hair had been trimmed into
a butch haircut. He was deeply
tanned, wore a tee-shirt, white
slacks, sneakers and looked gen-
erally as if he would be at home
on Muscle Beach.

The other one had to be Pay-
lar: a genuine Guide or, at least,
a direct connection to them. She
was downright cute in a slender,
dark way. She might be in her
early twenties. . .

But for a moment, as Com-
mager stood up to be introduced,
he had the confused impression

GALAXY SCIENCE FICTION

that jungles and deserts and
auroras mirrored in ice-flows had
come walking into the room with
her.

Well, well, he thought. Along
with Hawkes, here was another
real personality.

They didn’t continue with the
experiments on Ira. Wilson Knox
reported Commager’s feat in Las
Vegas to Paylar, who seemed to
know all about it, and then went
bumbling on into a series of anec-
dotes about other dice manipu-
lators he had known or heard
about.

Except for the Boharts, the
others listened with varying ex-
pressions of polite boredom. But
Ira seemed genuinely fascinated
by the subject and kept glancing
at Commager, to see how he was
taking it. Jean became argumen-
tative.

“Nobody can really prove that
anyone has such abilities!” she
stated decisively. “Ira’s been
working around with this sort of
thing for years and he’s never
shown me anything that couldn’t
have been a coincidence!”

Ira grinned apologetically. Wil-
son Knox sent a quick glance
toward Paylar, who had settled
herself in an armchair to Com-
mager’s left. The Reverend, Com-
mager thought, seemed both
miffed and curiously apprehen-
sive.

Commager’s own interest in

the group became suddenly more
lively.

“There are people in this world
today, my dear young lady,” Wil-
son Knox was telling Jean, “who
control the Secret Powers of the
Universe!”

Jean sighed. “When Ira tells
me something like that, I always
want to know why we don’t hear
what these mysterious people are
doing.”

WILSON KNOX glanced at
” Paylar again. And this time,
Commager decided, there was no
question about it: the odd little
man seemed genuinely alarmed.
The bushy eyebrows were work-
ing in unconcealed agitation.

“We must consider,” he told
Jean helplessly, “that such peo-
ple may have their own reasons
for not revealing their abilities.”

“Hm!” sniffed Jean.

Commager laughed. “Mrs. Bo-
hart has a point there, you know,”
he said to Paylar. “I understand
the Guides imply they can, at
any rate, train people to develop
extrasensory abilities. Would you
say they can produce some tangi-
ble proof for that claim?”

“Sometimes,” she said. “With
some people.” She looked a little
tired of the subject, as if it were
something she had heard dis-
cussed often, as she probably had,
so Commager was surprised when
she added in the same tone, “I

THE TIES OF EARTH

1 1

could, I think, produce such
proofs very easily for you, Mr.
Commager. To your own satis-
faction, at least.”

As she turned to look at him,
her dark elfin face sober and con-
fident, Commager was aware of
a sudden stillness in the room.
Wilson Knox started what
seemed to be a protesting gesture
and subsided again. And Jean
was frowning, as if she had just
discovered an unexpected uncer-
tainty in herself.

“It’s a fair offer,” Commager
acknowledged. “If you’re suggest-
ing an experiment, I’ll be glad
to cooperate.”

For a moment, he saw some-
thing almost like compassion in
the serious young face that
studied him. Then Paylar turned
to the others. “Would you ar-
range the lighting in the usual
way? Mr. Commager, I should
like you to sit here.”

It was what they had come
here for, Commager thought.
Hawkes and the blond young
man, whose name was Lex Barth-
old, went about the room adjust-
ing the lights. Commager had a
strong impression that Jean now
would just as soon keep the ex-
periment from being carried out,
if she could think of a good
enough reason.

But the experiment would be
a flop anyway. No such half-
mystical parlor games had

worked on Commager since Lona
had died.

IN COMMAGER’S tropical fish

store on Wilshire Boulevard,
there were display tanks that
were laid out with the casual
stateliness of an English park
and others that had the formal
delicacy of a Chinese garden or
that appeared to copy, in fantas-
tic miniature detail, sections of
some dreamland salt-water reef.
These were the designs of two
artistically minded girls who
managed the store for Commager
and they were often expensively
duplicated by artists themselves
in the homes of the shop’s less
talented patrons.

But the tanks that most inter-
ested Commager were the big
ones in the back of the store,
partitioned off from the plate-
glass windows and the displays
that faced the boulevard. Here
fish and plants were bred, raised
and stocked without regard for
art, and the effect, when you sat
down to watch them for a while,
was that of being in the center
of a secret, green-lit jungle out
of which God knew what might
presently come soaring, wriggling
or crawling at you.

It wasn’t a bad way, in Com-
mager’s opinion, to pass a few
hours at night, when you didn’t

GALAXY SCIENCE FICTION

happen to be in a mood either
for sleep or human company. In
his case, that might happen once
or twice a week, or perhaps less
than once a month. When it hap-
pened more often, it was time to
get organized for another one of
those trips that would wind up
at some warm and improbable
point on the big globe of Earth,
where people were waiting to
help Commager fill his transport
tanks with brightly colored little
water-creatures — which, rather
surprisingly, provided him with
a very good income.

It was a pattern he had fol-
lowed for most of the second
half of his thirty-four years, the
only two interruptions having
been the second world war and
the nineteen months he’d been
married to Lona.

It was odd, he thought, that
he’d never found anything more
important to do with his life than
that, but the personal games he
could watch people play didn’t
seem to be even as interesting
as the one he’d chosen for him-
self.

Also, he went on thinking half-
seriously, if you got right down
to it, probably all the important
elements of life were contained
right inside the big tank he was
observing at the moment, so that
if he could really understand
what was going on in there,
brightly and stealthily among the

green underwater thickets, he
might know all that could be
known about the entire Universe.

Considered in that light, the
tank became as fascinating as a
stage play in a foreign language,
in which the actors wore the
bright masks of magic and played
games that weren’t so very un-
like those being played by hu-
man beings. But any real under-
standing of the purpose of the
play, human or otherwise, always
had seemed a little beyond Com-
mager’s reach.

TT E YAWNED and shifted
position in the chair he had
pulled up for himself. Perhaps he
was simply a bit more stupid
than most. But there was a fret-
ting feeling that this game play-
ing, whether on a large scale or
a small one, never really led to
much, beyond some more of the
same. There was, he conceded, a
good deal of satisfaction in it for
a time, but in the long run, the
returns started to diminish.

It seemed that things — in
some way Commager couldn’t
quite fathom — should have been
arranged differently.

A car passing on the street out-
side sent ' a whisper of sound
along the edge of his conscious-
ness. With that came the aware-
ness that it had been some time
since he’d last heard a car go by
and he found himself wondering

THE TIES OF EARTH

suddenly what time of night it
was.

He glanced at his wristwatch.
Three-thirty. A little startled, he
tried to compute how long he
had been sitting there.

Then it struck him in a surge
of panic that he couldn’t remem-
ber coming to the store at all!

But, of course, his memory
told him, you went with Jean to
that house. . .

And Paylar had asked him to
sit down and . . .

What kind of stunt had she
pulled on him?

The blackness of terror burst
into his consciousness as soon as
his thoughts carried him that far
— and it wiped out memory. He
tried again,

A black explosion. He pushed
at it and it retreated a little.

It had been between ten and
eleven o’clock. Five hours or so
ago. What was the last specific
thing he could remember?

H E HAD been sitting in a
chair, his eyes closed, a little
amused, a little bored. It had
been going on for some time.
Paylar, a quiet voice off to his
left, was asking him a series of
odd questions.

PAYLAR: But where are you,
Mr, Commager?

COMM ACER: (tapping his fore-
head): Right here! Inside my
head.

PAYLAR: Could you be more
specific about that?
COMMAGER (laughing) : I’m
somewhere between my ears. Or
somewhere back of my eyes.
PAYLAR: How far do you seem
to be from the right side of your
head? Do you sense the exact
distance?

Commager discovered he could
sense the exact distance. As a
point of awareness, he seemed to
be located an inch inside the
right side of his skull. Simultane-
ously, though, he noticed that his
left ear was less than an inch
and a half away from the same
spot — which gave him briefly
an odd impression of the general
shape of his head!

But he realized then that his
attention was shifting around in
there, rapidly and imperceptibly.
His ears seemed to be now above
him, now below and, for a mo-
ment, the top of his skull seemed
to have moved at least a yard
away.

He laughed. “How am I
doing?”

Paylar didn’t answer. Instead,
she asked him to imagine that he
was looking at the wall in front
of him.

After a while, that wasn’t too
difficult; Commager seemed to be
seeing the wall clearly enough,
with a standing lamp in either
corner, where Hawkes had placed
them. Next, the voice told him

GALAXY SCIENCE FICTION

to imagine that the same wall
now was only a few inches in
front of his face — and then that
it suddenly had moved six feet
behind him. It gave him an odd
feeling of having passed straight
through the wall in the moment
of shifting it.

“Put it twenty feet in front of
you again,” she said. “And now
twenty feet behind you.”

Again the sensation of shift-
ing iri space, as if he were swing-
ing back and forth, past and
through the wall. Commager had
become alert and curious now.

On the third swing, he went
straight into the blackness . . .
with panic howling around him!
After that, everything was blot-
ted out.

H E COULDN’T, Commager
discovered, close the gap
any farther now. Somewhere near
eleven o’clock in the evening, he’d
gone into that mental blackout
with its peculiarly unpleasant
side-effects. His next memory
might have been twenty minutes
ago, when he found himself star-
ing into the miniature underwater
forest of the fish tank in his store.

He could phone the Bohart
apartment, he thought, and find
out what actually had happened.
Immediately, then, he became
aware of an immense reluctance
to carry out that notion and he
grimaced irritably. It was no time

to worry about what the Boharts
might think, but he could imagine
Jean’s sleepy voice, annoyedly
asking who was calling at this
hour.

And he’d say, “Well, look, I’ve
lost my memory, I’m afraid. A
piece of it anyway — ”

He shook his head. They’d
gone there to show up the Guides,
after all! He’d have to work this
out by himself. As if in response
to his line of thought, the office
telephone, up in the front of the
store, began ringing sharply.

The unexpected sound jolted
Commager into a set of chills. He
sat there stiffly, while the ring
was repeated four times; and
then, because there was really
no reason not to answer it, no
matter how improbable it was
that someone would be calling
the store at this time of night, he
got up and started toward the
telephone down the long aisle of
back-store tanks. Here and there,
one of the tanks was illuminated
by overhead lights, like the one
before which he’d been sitting.

At the corner, where he turned
from the aisle into the office,
something lay in his path.

He almost stepped on it. He
stopped in shock.

It was a slender woman, lying
half on her side, half on her face,
in a rumpled dress and some-
thing like a short white fur
jacket.

THE TIES OF EARTH

Her loose hair hid her face.

The telephone kept on shrill-
ing.

/^OMMAGER dropped to one
knee beside the woman,
touched her and knew she was
dead, turned her over by the
shoulders and felt a stickiness on
his hands. There was a slanting
cut across her throat, black in
the shadows.

“Well,” a voice inside Com-
mager’s head said with insane
calm, “if it isn’t Miss MacDon-
ald!” He felt no pity for her at
the moment and no real alarm,
only a vast amazement.

He realized that the telephone
had stopped ringing and clusters
of thought burst suddenly and
coherently into his awareness
again. Somebody apparently
thought he was here, at three-
thirty in the morning — the same
somebody might also suspect that
Miss MacDonald was here and
even in what condition. And the
phone could have been dialed
quite deliberately at that moment
to bring Commager out of the
hypnotized or doped trance, or
whatever it was that somebody
knew he was trapped in.

In which case, they might be
wanting him to discover Ruth
MacDonald’s body at about this
time.

It would be better, he thought,
not to get tangled up just now

in wondering why anyone should
want that to happen; or even
whether, just possibly, it had
been he himself who had cut Miss
MacDonald’s brown throat.

What mattered was th&t, at
this instant, somebody was ex-
pecting him to react as reason-
ably as a shocked and stunned
man could react in such a situa-
tion.

The only really reasonable
course of action open to him was
to call the police promptly —
wherefore, if his curiously calm
assumption was correct, he would
be primarily expected to do just
that. It would be much less rea-
sonable, though still not too un-
likely, to carry that ghastly little
body far off somewhere and lose
it.

Or he could just walk out of
here and leave Miss MacDonald
on the floor, to be discovered by
the store’s staff in the morning.
That would be a stupid thing to
do, but still something that might
be expected of a sufficiently
dazed and frightened man.

So he wouldn’t do any of those
things! The hunch was strong in
him that the best way to react
just now was in a manner un-
reasonable beyond all calculation.

H E SHOVED Ruth MacDon-
ald’s body aside and flicked
on his cigarette lighter. On the
floor were gummily smeared

GALAXY SCIENCE FICTION

spots, but she had bled to death
somewhere else before she had
been dropped here!

Commager’s hands and clothes
were clean, so it was very im-
probable that he had carried her
in. The sensible thing, he thought,
would be to clean up the few
stains on the floor before he left,
removing any obvious evidence
that Miss MacDonald had been
in the store at all.

Wherefore, he didn’t bother to
do it.

Nor did he waste time wonder-
ing whether a half dozen tanks
in the back part of the store had
been lit when he came in here
or not. There was a variety of
possible reasons why someone
might have left a light on over
some of them.

He picked up the slender stiff-
ening body on the floor and car-
ried it to the front door.

The door was unlocked and
his Hudson was at the curb. He
shifted Miss MacDonald to one
arm, locked the store door behind
him, then placed her in the back
seat of the car.

Even Wilshire Boulevard was
a lonely street at this hour, but
he saw several sets of headlights
coming toward him as he got into
the car and started it. As far as
he could make out, there hadn’t
been any blood spilled around
inside the Hudson, either.

Twelve minutes later, he drove

past the corner house he’d visited
with Jean Bohart some time be-
fore ten in the evening. There
was a light on in one of the rooms
upstairs, which distinguished
Herbert Hawkes’s home from any
other house in sight. A few blocks
away, a dog began to bark.

Dogs might be a problem, he
thought.

C OMMAGER parked the car
a few hundred feet away and
sat still for perhaps a minute,
listening. The dog stopped bark-
ing. Headlights crossed an inter-
section a few blocks ahead of
him.

He got out, lifted Miss Mac-
Donald’s body out of the car and
walked unhurriedly back to the
corner house and over the step-
ping stones of the dichondra lawn
to the side of the house. Here
was a trellis, with a gate in it,
half open.

Commager eased his burden
sideways through the gate. In the
half-light of early morning, he
set Ruth MacDonald down under
a bush — which partly concealed
her — in about the same posi-
tion in which he’d found her. He
had a moment of pity to spare
for her now.

But there was motion inside
the house. Commager looked at
the door that opened into this
side garden. A vague sequence of
motions; somebody walking quiet-

T H E TIES OF EARTH

ly — but without any suggestion
of stealth — was coming closer
to the door. Commager stepped
quietly up to the wall beside the
door and flattened himself against
the wall.

A key clicked in the lock. The
door swung open. A big shape
sauntered out.

Commager’s fist was cocked
and he struck hard, slanting up-
ward, for the side of the neck
and the jaw. . .

He laid Herbert Hawkes down
beside the body of Ruth Mac-
Donald, one big arm draped
across her shoulders.

Let the Guides figure that one
out, he thought wearily. Not that
they wouldn’t, of course, but he
was going to continue to react
unreasonably.

Twenty minutes later, he was
in his apartment and sound
asleep.

Ill

HP HE BEDSIDE phone buzzed
waspishly. Commager hung
for a moment between two levels
of awareness. The blazing excite-
ment of the fight was over, but
he still hated to relinquish the
wild, cold, clear loneliness of the
blue —

The thin droning continued to
ram at his eardrums. His eyes
opened and he sat up, reaching
for the telephone as he glanced

at the clock beside it. 8:15.

“Alan? I think it worked! Ira
had breakfast and drove off to
the office, wrapped in deep
thought. You were terrific, simply
terrific! Just sitting there like a
stone wall —

Commager blinked, trying to
catch up with her. Jean Bohart
had an athlete’s healthy contempt
for lie-a-beds and felt no com-
punction about jolting them out
of their torpor. She probably as-
sumed he’d been up and around
for the past two hours.

Then his waking memories
suddenly flooded back. He sucked
in a shocked breath.

“Eh?” She sounded startled.

“I didn’t say anything,” he
managed. “Go ahead — ”

He wouldn’t, he realized pres-
ently, have to ask Jean any
leading questions. There was a
nervous tension in her that, on oc-
cation, found its outlet in a burst
of one-way conversation and this
was such an occasion. The Bo-
harts had left the Hawkes home
shortly before twelve, Ira appar-
ently depressed by the negative
results of the evening. The Rev-
erend Knox had made a phone
call somewhat earlier and had
been picked up within a few
minutes by an elderly woman
who, in Jean’s phrasing, looked
like a French bulldog.

“I think he was glad to get
out of there!” she added.

GALAXY SCIENCE FICTION

C OMMAGER didn’t comment
on that. He himself had
stayed On with the others. Ruth
MacDonald, in Jean’s opinion,
was making a pretty definite play
for him by that time, while Pay-
lar — “What’s her last name,
anyway?” — had become with-
drawn to the point of rudeness
after Commager’s spectacular
lack of reaction to her psycho-
logical games.

“I think she knew just what
we were doing by then!” Jean’s
voice held considerable satisfac-
tion. “So did that Hawkes char-
acter. Did you know he’s the
Herbert Hawkes who owned the
Hawkes Chrysler Agency on
Figueroa? Well, there’s some-
thing interesting about that — ”
Hawkes had sold out his busi-
ness about eight months before
and it was generally known that
his reason had been an imminent
nervous breakdown. “What do
you make of that, Alan?”

Offhand, Commager admitted,
he didn’t know what to make
of it.

Well, Jean interrupted, she was
convinced Hawkes had gone the
way Ira would have gone if they
hadn’t stopped him. “Those
Guides have him hypnotized or
something!” She laughed nerv-
ously. “Does it sound as if I’m
getting too dramatic about it?”
“No,” he said, recalling his last
glimpse of Hawkes and his horrid

little companion much too vivid-
ly. “He doesn’t strike me as act-
ing like a man who’s been hypno-
tized, though. Not that I know
much about that sort of thing.”

Jean was silent, thinking. “Did
anything in particular develop
between you and the MacDon-
ald?” she asked suddenly. There
was a strange sharpness in her
tone.

Commager felt himself whiten.
“No,” he said, “I just went home
by and by.” He tried for a teasing
“Are you jealous, little pal?”
note. “Were you worrying about
it?”

“She’s poison, that’s all!” Jean
said sharply.

A FTER SHE hung up, Com-
mager showered, shaved,
dressed and breakfasted, with
very little awareness of what he
was doing. He was in a frame of
mind he didn’t entirely under-
stand himself; under a flow of
decidedly unpleasant specula-
tions was a layer of tingling, al-
most physical elation which,
when he stopped to consider it,
appeared a less than intelligent
response to his present situation.
But the realization didn’t seem
to affect the feeling.

The feeling vanished abruptly
when he dumped the clothes he’d
been wearing the night before
out of the laundry bag into which
he had stuffed them, along with

THE TIES OF EARTH

the blanket on which he’d laid
Ruth MacDonald’s body in the
car.

He had handled her with some
caution and he couldn’t discover
marks on any of those articles
now that seemed likely to in-
criminate him. But he had no
doubt that a more competent in-
vestigation could reveal them.

The odd thing was that he still
couldn’t get himself to worry
about such an investigation! He
had no logical basis for his belief
that unless he himself announced
the murder of the secretary of
the Parapsychological Group of
Long Beach, nobody else was go-
ing to take that step. He couldn’t
even disprove that he hadn’t,
somewhere along the line last
night, dropped into sheer crimi-
nal lunacy.

But, so far, nobody had come
pounding at his door to accuse
him of murder. And Commager
retained the irrationally obstin-
ate conviction that nobody would.

He had an equally strong con-
viction that he had become the
target of the relentless hostility
of a group of people, of whose
existence he hadn’t known until
the day before — and that he
wouldn’t know why until he dis-
covered the reason for his loss
of conscious memory in a period
during which he had, to Jean
Bohart’s discerning eyes, showed
no noticeable change in behavior.

And, Commager decided fin-
ally, he’d better not let the lack
of satisfactory conscious evidence
for either certainty affect his
actions just now.

H E MADE two appointments
by telephone and left the
apartment an hour after he’d
been wakened. A few minute®
later, he was at the store, which
would open for business at ten
o’clock.

Commager unlocked the door
and strolled inside. The store’s
staff had got there at nine and
the floors, he noticed, had been
thoroughly mopped. Nobody in-
quired whether he’d been in dur-
ing the night, so it seemed he
had guessed right in leaving the
lights on over the big tanks.

He drove into Los Angeles
then, to keep his first appoint-
ment, at Dr. Henry L. Warbutt’s
Psychology Center.

Henry was a stout, white-
haired, energetic little man with
the dark melancholy eyes of one
of the great apes. “Thirty minutes
for free is all I can spare, even
for orphans,” he informed Com-
mager. “But you’re welcome to
that, so come in and sit down,
boy! Cup of tea, eh? What do
you hear from the Boharts?”
Commager declined the tea,
which was likely to be some nasty
kind of disguised health-brew,
and stated that the Boharts, when

GALAXY SCIENCE FICTION

last heard from, had been doing
fine. It wasn’t his first visit to the
Center. Both of his parents had
been dead before he was twelve
and Henry, who was a relative
on his father’s side, had been his
legal guardian until he came of
age.

“I want to find out what you
know about a new local organi-
zation called the Guides,” Com-
mager explained. “They’re on the
metaphysical side, I’d say, but
they seen to be doing some
therapy work. They’re not listed
in the telephone book.”

Henry looked slightly dis-
turbed. “If you mean the Guides
I’m thinking of, they’re not so
new. How did you hear about
them? Is Ira messing around with
that outfit now?”

Commager told him briefly of
last night’s earlier events, pre-
senting Jean Bohart’s version of
his own role in them, as if that
were the way he recalled it him-
self.

H ENRY became interested at
that point. “Do you remem-
ber just what those exercises
were that the woman put you
through?”

When Commager had . de-
scribed them, he nodded. “They
got those gimmicks from another
group. I’ve used them myself
now and then. Not on cash clients,
of course, just as an experiment.

THE TIES OF EARTH

The idea is to divert your atten-
tion away from your body-ego,
if you know what I mean. No?
Well, then — ”

He made a steeple of his hands
and scowled at his fingertips.
“Metaphysically, it’s sometimes
used as a method to get you out
of your physical body.” He waved
his hands vaguely around. “Off
you go into the astral plane or
something!” He grinned. “Under-
stand now?”

“More or less,” Commager said
doubtfully. “Did you ever see it
happen?”

“Eh? Oh, no! With me, they
usually just go to sleep. Or else
they get bored and won’t react
at all, about like you did. There’s
no therapeutic value in it that I
know of. But probably no harm,
either.”

“Would you say whether
there’s any harm in the Guides?”

“Well,” said Henry thoughtful-
ly, “they’re certainly one of the
more interesting groups of our
local psychological fauna. Per-
sonally, I wouldn’t go out of my
way to antagonize them. Of
course, Ira’s such a damn fool,
you probably had to do some-
thing pretty obvious to discour-
age him. Fifteen or twenty years
ago, the Guides were working
principally with drugs, as far as
I could make out at the time. I
don’t know whether this is the
same organization or not, but just

lately — the last year or so —
I’ve been hearing gossip about
them again.”

“What kind of gossip?”

«WELL, YOU know a good
" many of the people who
come into this Center for therapy
are interested in metaphysics in
one way or another,” Henry ex-
plained. “Some of them have
been telling me lately that the
Guides are the latest thing in a
True Group. And a True Group,
in their language, means chiefly
that the people in it have some
honest - to - goodness supernatural
abilities and powers!”

He grimaced unhappily. “An-
other characteristic is that no-
body else knows exactly who be-
longs to a True Group. In that
way, your acquaintances seem to
be living up to the legend.”

Commager said he’d been un-
der the impression that the
Guides dealt in parapsychology.

Henry nodded. “Well, they’d
use that, too, of course! Depend-
ing on the class of client — ” He
hesitated briefly. “By and large,
I’d say the Guides were a very
good outfit for fairly normal citi-
zens like you and the Boharts to
stay away from!”

He’d also heard of the Rever-
end Wilson Knox and of the
Temple of Antique Christianity,
though not favorably.

“Knox has a crummy little sect

back in one of the Hollywood
canyons. They go in for Greek
paganism. Strictly a screwball
group.” He didn’t know anything
of the Parapsychological Group
of Long Beach. “You can’t keep
up with all of them.”

J ULIUS SAVAGE was a lanky,
sun-browned hypnotist who’d
sometimes gone spear-fishing
with Commager. On one such
occasion — the last, if Julius had
anything to say about it — Com-
mager had been obliged to haul
him half-drowned out of a kelp
bed and thump him back into
consciousness. Which made him
the right man right now.

He clasped his hands behind
his head, rocked himself back
from his desk and looked first
interested and then highly dubi-
ous, while Commager went on
talking.

“You’re about as lousy a hyp-
notic subject as I am myself,
Alan!” Julius protested finally. “I
tried to put you under twice, re-
member? Anyway, how about
sending you to my tame M.D.
for a check-up first? Amnesia
isn’t anything to — No?” He
considered. “Well, how long ago
did this happen?”

The fact that it had happened
only the night before reassured
him somewhat. So presently

GALAXY SCIENCE FICTION

Commager was sitting in an arm-
chair being informed that his
eyelids were getting heavier and
heavier.

An hour later, Julius said dis-
couragedly, “This isn’t getting us
anywhere and I’ve got another
appointment at two o’clock! How
bad do you want that informa-
tion, Alan?”

“It’s a matter of life and
death!”

“Oh, hell!” said Julius. He
went out of the room and came
back with a small bottle, partly
filled with a slightly oily, aro-
matic liquid. “I don’t use this
often, but — By the way, with
the possible exception of last
night, did anyone else ever try
to hypnotize you?”

“Ira Bohart did, the first time
I met him,” Commager recalled.
“It was at a party. No results.”

“We’ll make it two spoonfuls,”
Julius decided.

nPEN MINUTES later, Com-
mager got into the black-
ness. The next time he conscious-
ly opened his eyes, it was past
three in the afternoon. Julius,
looking pale and exhausted, stood
at the desk watching him. He’d
loosened his tie and hung his
jacket over the back of a chair.
His hair was disheveled.

“Brother!” he remarked. “Well,
we got something, Alan. I’ll play
parts of it back to you.” He

jerked his head at a gently burbl-
ing percolator on a mantel. “Cup
of coffee there for you. Better
have some.”

Commager sipped black coffee,
yawned, and took note of the
time. Too much of the day al-
ready was past, he thought un-
easily; he wondered what the
Guides had been doing mean-
while. “What happened to your
appointments?” n

“Canceled them,” Julius said,
fiddling with the tape recorder.
“They’ll keep.” He glanced
around at Commager. “Here’s the
first thing we got. Chronological-
ly, it seems to fit in at the end
of the period you can’t remem-
ber. Symbolism, but I’m curious.
We’ll try it first.”

Commager listened. After a
while, there were pricklings of
memory. When Julius stopped
the recorder, he remarked, “I had
a dream this morning that seems
to tie in with that.”

“Ah?” Julius looked profession-
ally cautious. “Well, let’s hear
about it.”

Commager hesitated. The
dream seemed irrelevant and
rather childish, like a fairy tale.
He’d been flying around in a
great open space, he began at
last. And he’d been wondering
why nobody else was up there
with him, but he hadn’t felt par-
ticularly concerned about it.
Then a hawk came swooping at

THE TIES OF EARTH

him, trying to knock him out of
the air.

There was a long leash at-
tached to the hawk’s leg and
Commager noticed that, far down
below, a number of people were
holding the leash and watching
the battle. “That explained why
there wasn’t anyone else around,
you see. When anyone tried it,
they simply sent a hawk up after
him.”

“Hm!” said Julius. “Recognize
the people?”

“No ” Commager checked

himself and laughed. “Of course,
it just struck me! Hawkes was
the name of one of the people I
met last night! That explains the
dream!”

Julius nodded doubtfully. “Pos-
sibly. How did it continue?”

AS COMMAGER recalled it,
there hadn’t been much more
to it. He couldn’t damage the
hawk and the hawk couldn’t bring
him down; finally it disappeared.
Then he’d been up there alone
. . . and then he’d been wakened
by the telephone.

Julius tapped the desk with
the eraser end of a pencil, looking
thoughtful. “Well — ” he sighed.
He turned to the recorder. “Let’s
try another part of this now, Alan.
The central part. Incidentally,
we didn’t get into what you were
actually doing last night. These
are your subjective impressions

and they aren’t necessarily an
immediately recognizable reflec-
tion of real events, past or pres-
ent. You understand that?”

Commager said he did. But he
felt- a stab of sharp apprehension.
He was reasonably certain that
whatever Julius heard or guessed
in his office remained a private
matter. But his own line of action
had been based on the solid per-
sonal conviction that, whatever
had happened last night, it hadn’t
been he who had killed Ruth
MacDonald.

In view of the hypnotist’s care-
ful and almost formal phrasing,
Commager was, for a few mo-
ments at least, not quite so sure
about that.

They were a bad few mo-
ments. . .'

Then the recorder was turn-
ing again.

?? W HAT DO you make of
’’ it?” Julius asked. “It will
help me formulate my own
opinion.”

Commager shrugged. He still
felt shaken, after the intermit-
tent waves of grief, rage and re-
morse that had pounded through
him while a section of the tape
rewound itself again — with a
vividness and immediacy that
dazed him, but still seemed
rather unaccountable. After all,
that had been over and done with
almost four years ago!

GALAXY SCIENCE FICTION

“It’s fairly obvious to me,” he
said reluctantly. At least his voice
sounded steady enough. “A few
months before my wife died, I’d
begun to get interested in the
ESP experiments she was play-
ing around with. You remember
Lona was almost as bad that way
as Ira Bohart.”

He managed a brief, careful
grin. “It annoyed me at first, but,
of course, I didn’t let her know.
I thought she’d drop it soon
enough. When she didn’t, I de-
cided I’d experiment on the quiet
by myself. Actually, I was after
information I could use to con-
vince Lona she was wasting her
time with that sort of thing —
and then she’d have more time
to spare for the kind of fun and
games I was interested in.”

Julius smiled faintly and
nodded.

me — and sometimes she would!”
Commager smiled. “I was also,
you see, keeping a list of the
times these little experiments
didn’t work out, and they often
didn’t, at first. So that, when I
told Lona about it finally, it
would be obvious that the coin-
cidences had been just that.”

He hesitated. “I still think
they were just that. But one day,
it struck me I’d accumulated too
many coincidences lately. It
shook me.”

“Did it stop your experimenta-
tion?” Julius remained intent on
his art work.

“A few days later, it did,” Corm
mager said. He discovered sud-
denly that he was sweating.
“Lona phoned me that afternoon
that she was driving down to the
beach to pick me up. After she
hung up, I had a sudden positive
feeling that if she drove her car
that afternoon, she’d get killed!
I almost called her back. But I
decided I wasn’t going to turn
into another Ira Bohart. As of
then, I was quitting all this ESP
business and so was Lona! When
she got there, I’d tell her — ”

The sweat was running down
his face now. “Well, you know
that part of it. Lona had a heart
attack while driving, the doctors
thought, and crashed and got
killed.” He paused again, because
his voice had begun to shake. “I
don’t know why that got on there

STARTED making lists of
A coincidences,” Commager ex-
plained. “Occasions when I’d tell
myself Lona would be home at
six, say, and she’d actually show
up about that time. Or I’d decide
what dress she’d select to wear
next morning — ”

“Predictions, generally?” Julius
drew a precise little circle on the
desk blotter with his pencil and
studied it critically.

“Yes. Or I’d put the idea into
her head that she wanted to talk
about some particular thing with

THE TIES OF EARTH

— ” he nodded at the recorder
— “except tnat last night was
the hrst time since that I felt,
even lor a minute, that something
mignt be going on tnat couxdn t
be explained in a perfectly nor-
mal way!”

CCnpHAT,” inquired Julius,
“was while you were going
through that peculiar set of exer-
cises you were describing, wasn’t
it? Alan, how long ago has it
been, exactly, since your wife
died?”

“Not quite four years.” Com-
mager drove back a surge of im-
patience. “I suppose I’ve felt
guilty enough about it ever since!
But right now, Julius, I’m inter-
ested in finding out why I lost a
few hours of memory last night
and how to restore them. Are we
getting any closer to that?”

“I think we are. Can you be
at this office at 10 a.m. two days
from tomorrow? That’s Thursday
morning — ”

“Why should I come here
then?”

Julius shrugged. “Because
that’s the earliest appointment I
could make for you with Dr.
Ciardi. I phoned him just before
you woke up. He’s a friend of
mine and an excellent psychia-
trist, Alan. We do a lot of work
together.”

Commager said in angry
amazement, “Damn you, Julius!

I told you I didn’t want anyone
else to know about this!”

“I know,” Julius admitted un-
happily. “We’ve been fairly good
friends for about eight years
now, haven’t we? We’ve been in
and out of each other’s homes
and met each other’s acquaint-
ances, right?”

Commager’s fingertips drum-
med on his right knee. He was
still furious. “So what?”

“So hell, Alan! What you
were telling me just now never
happened! Your wife wasn’t
killed in an auto- accident four
years ago because, four years ago,
you didn’t have a wife! To the
best of my knowledge, you’ve
never been married!”

|^OMMAGER had a rather
early dinner at Tilford’s. A
mirror lined the entire wall on
the opposite side of the room;
now and then, he glanced at him-
self. For a sort of lunatic, he
thought, the big, sun-tanned man
sitting there looked remarkably
calm and healthy.

He was still amazed, above all,
at the apparent instantaneous-
ness with which he had realized
that what Julius had blurted out
was true! He could picture Lona
in a hundred different ways, very
vividly, but he couldn’t actually
recall having ever mentioned her

GALAXY SCIENCE FICTION

to anybody else! And he couldn’t
now remember a single time
when he and she and any other
person had been together.

It was almost as if the entire
episode of Lona had been a story
somebody had told him, illus-
trated out of his own imaginings.
And now, in a few hours, the story
was beginning to fade out. Spe-
cific scenes had dropped almost
beyond the reach of memory.
The image of Lona herself start-
ed to blur.

H IS immediate reaction had
been an odd mixture of
shocked self-disgust and profound
relief, threaded with the feeling
that actually he’d always known,
without being consciously aware
of it, that there wasn’t any real
Lona.

Even the emptions he’d felt
while listening to the tape re-
corder were a part of the fabrica-
tion; almost at the instant of
realization, they began to break
away from him. Like the sudden
shattering of a hard shell of alien
matter, Commager thought,
which he’d been dragging around,
rather like a hermit-crab, under
the pretense that it was a natural
part of himself. The self-disgust
became even more pronounced at
that comparison.

But whatever his original mo-
tives had been for imposing that
monstrous construction upon his

mind, Commager couldn’t see any
further connection between it and
the events of the past night.

Apparently he had thrust him-
self into a period of amnesia to
avoid the full impact of an artifU
cial set of emotions. In that
period, there had been a very
real and very unpleasant occur-
rence — a murder.

His main reason now for re-
maining convinced that he hadn’t
been the murderer was that the
evening papers carried no indi-
cation that the body of Ruth
MacDonald had been found.

Which certainly indicated
guilt on the part of those who
must have found her.

He could afford to wait until
Thursday, Commager decided, to
go digging after the causes of his
delusion under Dr. Ciardi’s guid-
ance. But he probably couldn’t
afford to wait at all to find out
what the Guides — he still had
to assume it was the Guides —
were preparing for him next.

And perhaps the best way to
find out would be, quite simply,
to ask.

TTE FINISHED his dinner,
walked up the street to a
telephone booth and dialed the
number of Herbert Hawkes’s
home. A man’s voice informed
him presently that it was the
Hawkes residence, Lex Barthold
speaking.

THE TIES OF EARTH

That, Commager recalled, was
the name of the blond young man
who had been an untalkative
member of the party last night.
He gave his own name and said
he was trying to contact Miss
Paylar — a piece of information
which produced a silence of sev-
eral seconds at the other end.
But when Barthold spoke again,
he sounded unshaken.

“Paylar isn’t in at the moment.
Shall I take your message, Mr.
Commager?”

Commager said no, he’d try
again, and hung up. Now that, he
reflected, walking back to his car,
seemed to be an interesting sort
of household!

For the first time since leaving
Julius’s office, he wasn’t too dis-
pleased with himself. If he saw
Paylar alone, he might, as far as
appearances went, be taking an
interest in the well-being of Ira
Bohart or, reasonably enough, in
Paylar herself.

And things could start devel-
oping from that point.

Of course, she might avoid let-
ting him see her alone. In any
case, his call would give them
something new to consider.

He drove to the beach and
turned south toward San Diego.
A half hour later, he parked be-
fore the cabin where, among
bulkier items of fishing gear, he
kept a 45-caliber revolver. He
put that in the glove compart-

ment of the car and started back
to town.

T HE TELEPHONE rang a
few minutes after he reached
his apartment.

“I’ve called you twice in the
last hour,” Paylar said. “I under- i
stand you want to speak to me.”

“I do,” said Commager. “Do
you happen to have the evening
free?”

She laughed. “I’ve arranged to
have it free. You can meet me
at your aquarium store, Mr.
Commager.”

“Eh?” he said stupidly.

“At your store.” Her voice still
sounded amused. “You see; I may
have a business proposition for
you.”

Then the line went dead.
Commager swore and hung up.
When he turned into Wilshire
Boulevard not very many min-
utes later, he saw a long gray
car, vague under the street lights,
move away from the curb a hun-
dred feet or so beyond his store
and drive off. There was no sign
of Paylar.

He parked and followed the
car thoughtfully with his eyes.

Then he got out. The store was
locked, the interior dark. But in
back of the office, behind the
partition, was a shimmering of
light.

He thought of the gun in his
car. There had been one murder.

GALAXY SCIENCE FICTION

It seemed a little early for an-
other one.

He unlocked the door and
locked it again behind him. This
time, there were no bodies lying
around the aisles. But at the back
of the store, standing before a
lighted fish tank and looking into
it, Paylar was waiting for him.

H E DIDN’T ask her how she
got in. It seemed a theatri-
cal gesture, a boasting indication
that his affairs could be easily
invaded from without. Aside from
that, the darkened store undoubt-
edly was a nice place for an
ambush. Commager wondered
briefly why he didn’t feel more
concerned about that and real-
ized then that he was enormously
angry. ' An ambush might have
been a relief.

“Did you find out much about
us today?” Paylar asked.

“Not enough,” he admitted.
“Perhaps you can tell me more.”
“That’s why I’m here.”
Commager looked at her skep-
tically. She was wearing a black
sweater and slacks that appeared
wine-colored in the inadequate
light from the big tank. A small,
finely shaped body and a small,
vivid face. The mouth smiled
soberly; black eyes gleamed like
an animal’s as she turned her
head toward him.

“We’re an organization,” she
said, “that operates against the

development of parapsychologi-
cal abilities in human beings. . .”
Oddly enough, it made sense
and he found himself believing
her. Then he laughed. “Do you
object to my winning a crap
game?”

Paylar said seriously, “We
don’t object to that. But you’re
not stopping there, Mr. Com-
mager.”

Again there was an instant of
inner agreement; an elation and
anxiety. Commager hesitated,

startled by his reaction. He said,
“I’m not aware of any ambition
along that line.”

She shook her head. “I don’t
think you’re being quite truthful.
But it doesn’t really matter how
aware you are of it just now. The
last twenty-four hours have indi-
cated clearly that you can’t be
checked by any ordinary

methods.” She frowned. “The pos-
sibility had been foreseen — and
so we hit you with everything
that was immediately available,
Mr. Commager. I was sure it was
enough.”

Commager felt a little bewild-
ered. “Enough for what?”

“Why, almost anybody else
would have done something sen-
sible — and then refused to ever
budge out of the everyday world
again, even in his thoughts. In-
stead, you turned around and
started to smoke us out — which,
incidentally, saved you for the

THE TIES OF EARTH

moment from an even more un-
nerving experience!”

C OMMAGER stared at her,
appalled. That final comment
had no present meaning for him,
but she obviously was speaking
about a murder of which she, at
the very least, had known at the
time. She considered it mildly
amusing that it had back-fired on
them!

He said harshly, “I’d enjoy
breaking your neck. But I suspect
that you’re a little crazy.”

She shrugged, smiling, “The

trouble is that you’re not going
to go on thinking that, Mr. Com-
mager. If you did, we could safe-
ly disregard you.”

He looked down at his hands.
“So what are you going to do?”
“There are others who say you
can be stopped. It’s certain you
won’t like their methods, though
I’m not entirely sure they will
be effective. I came here tonight
to offer you an alternative.”

“Go ahead and offer it.”

“You can join us,” she said.
Commager gave a short laugh
of sheer astonishment. “Now why

GALAXY SCIENCE FICTION

should I want to do that?”

“In the end,” Paylar said sober-
ly, “you may have very little
choice! But there’s another rea-
son. You’ve been trying, all your
life, to bring your abilities into
your consciousness and under
your control.”

He shook his head. “If you
mean wild talents, I haven’t done
anything of the sort.”

“Unfortunately,” she said, “you
won't remain unaware of that
trend in yourself very much long-
«'i Anil, if you cooperate with us,
we can and will help you to do

just that. But we can’t let you
continue by yourself, without
safeguards. You’re too likely to
be successful, you see. Those
wild talents can become extreme-
ly wild!”

“You know,” he said, almost
good-humoredly, “I think you
really believe what you say. But
as far as I’m concerned, you’re
a group of criminal lunatics with-
out any more secret ability than
I have myself — ”

“That,” Paylar replied undis-
turbed, “is precisely what we’re
afraid of. For the time being,

THE TIES OF EARTH

though, we can use our abilities
in ways that you cannot. What
happened while you were doing
those exercises last night, Mr.
Commager?”

He looked at her and then
away. “I got rather bored.”

TJAYLAR laughed. “You’re ly-
ing! Exercises of that kind
provide very convincing illusions,
and very little else, for people
who are hungry for illusion. But
since you have an ability, it took
no more than a word to bring it
into action! That was when we
knew you had to be stopped.
However, I’m afraid you’re still
turning down my offer.”

“You read my mind that time,
lady! I’d turn you over to the
police, too, if I thought it would
do any good.”

“It wouldn’t,” she assured him.
Her head tilted a moment, with
soft grace, into an attitude of
listening. “I think my car is com-
ing back for me. I’ll leave that
offer open, Mr. Commager — in
case you survive long enough
now to except it!”

He grinned. “You shouldn’t
frighten me like that.”

“I’ve frightened you a little,
but not nearly enough. But there
is more than one way to shake
a man to his senses — or out of
them — so perhaps we can still
change your mind. Would you
let me out the front door now?”

Lights slid over the ceiling
above her as she spoke, and the
long gray car, its engine throb-
bing, stood at the curb when they
came out. Paylar turned at the
car door.

“You know where I’m stay-
ing,” she said, looking up at him,
“if you want to find me.”

Commager nodded.

She smiled and then the door
opened for her and light briefly
filled the interior of the car.

Seconds later, he stood staring
after it as it fled down the street.
She’d been right about there be-
ing more than one way of shak-
ing a man out of his senses.

The driver of the car — the
very much alive driver — had
been Ruth MacDonald!

T TNDER WHAT wasn’t quite
a full Moon tonight, the Bay
would have looked artificial if it
hadn’t been so huge. A savage,
wild place, incongruous in this
area with the slow thump and
swirl and thunder of the tide.

A mile to the south was a
cluster of cottages down near the
water’s edge. Commager’s cabin
was as close as anything could
have been built to the flank of
the big northern drop-off. He
could look down at the sharp
turn of the highway below him
or out at the Bay. Nobody yet
had tried to build on the rocky
rises of ground behind him.

GALAXY SCIENCE FICTION

Without ordinary distractions,
it was a good place for a few
hours of painstaking reorienta-
tion. He wasn’t exactly fright-
ened, Commager told himself.
But when he had recognized
Ruth MacDonald, a wave of un-
reason inside him had seemed to
rise to meet and merge with the
greater wave of unreason rolling
in from a shadow-world without.
For that moment, the rules of
reality had flickered out of
existence.

An instant later, he’d had them
solidly re-established. He was
now simply a man who knew
something had happened that he
couldn’t begin to explain ration-
ally. It was a much more accepta-
ble situation, since it included
the obvious explanation of irra-
tionality.

On Thursday morning, he
could tell Dr. Ciardi, “Look, Doc,
I’m having hallucinations. The
last one was a honey. I thought
I was carrying a dead woman
all over town! What do we do
about it?”

And they’d do whatever was
done in such circumstances and
it would be a sane, normal, active
life for Alan Commager forever
after — with a woman more or
less like Jean Bohart to live it
with, which would keep out the
shadowy Lonas. With everything,
in fact, that didn’t fit-, into that
kind of life, that belonged to the

shadow-worlds, as completely
obliterated and forgotten as they
could become.

Commager wondered what
made that picture look so unsat-
isfactory.

I T STRUCK him suddenly
that, according to Paylar, this
was exactly how the Guides had
expected him to react as soon as
her little games had steered him
into a bout of amnesia and hallu-
cinations. They’d wanted, she’d
said, in approximately those
words, to put him in a frame of
mind that would make him re-
fuse to ever budge out of the
safe, everyday world again, even
in his thoughts.

Commager grimaced. But
they’d become convinced then
that he wasn’t going to do it!

He might do it all the same,
he thought. But the reason it
couldn’t be a completely satis-
factory solution was growing
clear. One couldn’t discount the
probability that there was a little
more to the shadow-worlds than
lunacy and shadow. Perhaps only
a very little more and perhaps
not. But if he avoided looking at
what was there, he would never
find out.

And then he realized that he
wasn’t going to avoid looking at
it, hadn’t really been seriously
considering it. He swore at him-
self, because avoidance did seem

THE TIES OF EARTH

still the simple and rational solu-
tion, providing one could be satis-
fied with it.

He couldn’t be satisfied with
it and that was that. He could
see now that if an organization
such as Paylar had described the
Guides to be existed, and if it
were composed, at least in part,
of people who really had devel-
oped an understanding and work-
ing knowledge of the possibilities
of psi, it would be in a uniquely
favorable position to control and
check the development of similar
abilities in others.

Its connections and its influ-
ence would be primarily with
the psychological fringe groups
here and with their analogs else-
where; and the people wfio were
drawn to such groups would be
those who were dissatisfied with
or incompetent in normal lines
of activity, and had become ab-
normally interested in compen-
sating for their lack of other
achievement by investigating the
shadowy, vague, ego-bolstering
promise of psi.

And people frightened by the
threat of total war, driven into
a search for psychic refuge by
the prospect of physical destruc-
tion.

In either case, because they
were uncertain, less than norm-
ally capable people, they could
be controlled without too much
difficulty — and carefully divert-

ed then, in groups or as individ-
uals, from the thing they were
seeking and might stumble upon!

The exercises she’d demon-
strated to him, Paylar had said,
were designed primarily to pro-
vide convincing illusions for those
who were hungry for illusion.

CHE AND her associates, Com-
k -' mager realized, might feel it
was necessary. They might know
just enough to be afraid of what
such knowledge could lead to. If
it were possible to encourage a
pair of dice to bounce and spin
in just the right pattern to win
for you, it might, for example,
also be possible to send a few
buildings bouncing and spinning
through a city! Of course, nobody
ever seemed to have done it, but
that might be due precisely to
the existence of some controlling
agency, such as the Guides
claimed to be.

For a while, Commager re-
garded the possibility of accept-
ing Paylar’s invitation to join
her group — and, a few seconds
later, he knew he wasn’t going to
do that either!

However determined he might
be to proceed with a painstaking
and thorough investigation of
this field of possibilities now,
there was still a feeling of some-
thing completely preposterous
about the entire business.

He could accept the fact that

GALAXY SCIENCE FICTION

he had been shaken up mentally
to the point where he might
qualify without too much diffi-
culty for the nearest insane asy-
lum. But he wasn’t ready to admit
to anybody just yet that he, a
grown man, was taking the mat-
ter of psi very seriously.

It was something you could try
out for yourself, just as an experi-
ment, behind locked doors and
with the windows shaded.

So Commager locked the front
door to his cabin and tried it out.

T HE TELEGRAM which had
been shoved under his apart-
ment door during the night gave
a Hollywood telephone number
and urgently requested him to
call it. It was signed by Elaine
Lovelock. So far as Commager
could remember, Elaine was no
one he knew. When he dialed the
number, nobody answered.

He’d try tp reach her again
before he left for the store, he
decided. It was eight-thirty now;
he’d just got in from the Bay.
The chances were somebody’s de
luxe fifty-gallon tropical fish tank
had started to leak on the living
room carpet, and it hadn’t oc-
curred to them immediately that
this was what pails and pots
were for.

He sat down to write a few
notes on last night’s experiment.

Nothing very striking had hap-
pened; he suspected he’d simply
fallen asleep after the first forty
minutes or so. But if he kept
notes, something like a recogniz-
able pattern might develop.

Item : The “Lona complex”

hadn’t bothered him much. It
was beginning to feel like some-
thing that had happened to some-
body else a long time ago. So
perhaps the emotions connected
with it hadn’t been triggered by
Paylar’s exercises, as Julius
seemed to assume. Or else, since
he no longer believed in it, it
was on its way out as a complex

— he hoped.

Item : With his eyes closed, he
could imagine very easily that
he was looking through the wall
of the room into another section
of the cabin; also that he had
moved there in person, as a form
of awareness. In fact, he had
roamed happily all around the
Bay area for about ten minutes.
For the present, that proved only
that he had a much more vivid
imagination than he’d thought —
though whoever created Lona
could be assumed to have con-
siderable hidden talent along that
line!

Item: When he’d tried to

“read” specific pages of a closed
book lying on a table near him,
he had failed completely.

Item: He had run suddenly

— he might have been asleep by

THE TIES OF EARTH

then — into successive waves of
unexplained panic, which brought
him upright in his chair with his
pulses hammering wildly.

Item-. The panic had faded
out of reach the instant he began
to investigate it and he hadn’t
been able to recall it.

Item-. Either shortly before or
after that event, he’d had for a
while the sensation of being the
target of stealthy and malevolent
observation. He had made an
attempt to “locate” the observer
and gained the impression that
the other one unhurriedly with-
drew.

Item-. Briefly, he’d had a feel-
ing of floating up near the cfeiling
of the room, watching his own
body sitting in the armchair with
its eyes closed. This had rocked
him hard enough to awaken him
again and he had concluded the
experiments.

Item : After waking up, he

hadn’t found or imagined he’d
found Ruth MacDonald or any-
body else lying around the cabin,
murdered or otherwise. He’d
checked.

And that about summed it up,
Commager decided.- Not very
positive results, but he was de-
termined to continue the experi-
ments.

He suspected Julius would
feel very dubious about all this;
but Julius wasn’t going to be
informed.

He himself was in a remark-
ably cheerful mood this morning.

M RS. LOVELOCK had a mag-
nificent, musical voice, rath-
er deep for a woman.

“I’m so glad you called again,
Mr. Commager,” she said. “I was
away on ^n unavoidable errand.
Dr. Knox needs to see you imme-
diately! How soon can you be
here?”

“Dr. Knox?” Commager re-
peated. “Do you mean the Rev-
erend Wilson Knox?”

“That is correct. Do you have
the address of our Temple?”
Commager said he didn’t.
There was no immediate reason
to add that he hadn’t the slight-
est intention of going there,
either. “What did he want to see
me about?”

Mrs. Lovelock hesitated. “I
couldn’t explain it satisfactorily
by telephone, Mr. Commager.” A
trace of anxiety came into her
voice. “But it’s quite urgent!”
Commager said he was sorry;
he had a very full business day
ahead of him — which was true
— so, unless he could get some
indication of what this was all
about —

The melodious voice told him
quaveringly, “Dr. Knox had a
serious heart attack last night. He
needs your help!”

Commager scowled. She sound-
ed as off-beat as the rest of them

GALAXY SCIENCE FICTION

and he had an urgent impulse
to hang up.

He said instead, “I don’t quite
see how I could be of much help
under those circumstances. I’m
not a doctor, you know.”

“I do know that, Mr. Com-
mager,” Mrs. Lovelock replied.
“I also know that you haven’t
been acquainted with Dr. Knox
for more than a few days. But I
assure you that you may be sav-
ing a human life by coming out
here immediately! And that is all
I can tell you now — ”

She stopped short, sounding as
if she were about to burst into
tears.

What she said didn’t make
sense. Also Commager hadn’t
liked the Reverend Knox, quite
aside from the company he kept.
But he could, he supposed re-
signedly, afford to waste a few
more hours now.

“What was that address?” he
asked, trying not to sound too
ungracious about it.

/ k N THE way over, he had
time to wonder whether this
mightn’t be part of some new
little game the Guides wanted to
play with him. He was inclined
to discount Paylar’s threats —
psychologically, he suspected,
they’d already tried everything
they could do to him — and they
didn’t look like people who would
resort readily to physical vio-

lence, though Hawkes could be
an exception there.

When Commager came in sight
of the Temple of Antique Chris-
tianity, physical violence sudden-
ly looked a little more likely. He
stopped a moment to consider
the place.

It was in a back canyon be-
yond Laurel; the last quarter-
mile had been a private road. A
tall iron gate blocked the road
at this point, opening into a
walled court with a small build-
ing to the right. A sign over a
door in the building indicated
that this was the office.

Some distance back, looming
over the walls of the court and
a few intervening trees, was an-
other structure, an old white
building in the Spanish style, the
size of a small hotel.

It looked like the right kind
of setting for the kind of screw-
ball cult Henry Warbutt had de-
scribed. Depending on who was
around, it also looked like a
rather good place for murder or
mayhem.

Should he just stroll in care-
lessly like a big, brave, athletic
man? Or should he be a dirty
coward and get his revolver out
of the glove compartment? It
was bound to make an unsightly
bulge in any of his jacket pock-
ets —

He decided to be a dirty
coward.

THE TIES OF EARTH

T HE GATE was locked, but
the lock clicked open a few
seconds after Commager pushed
a buzzer button beside it. The
only visible way into the area
was through the office door, so he
went inside.

A pallid young man and a
dark, intense - looking young
woman sat at desks across the
room from the door. The young
man told Commager he was ex-
pected and went to a side door
of the office with him, from where
he pointed to an entrance into
the big building, on the other end
of what he called the grove.

“Mrs. Lovelock is waiting for
you there,” he said and went
back to his desk.

The grove had the reflective
and well-preserved air of a sec-
tion of an exclusive cemetery,
with just enough trees growing
around to justify its name. There
was a large, square lawn in the
center, and a large, chaste bronze
statue stood at each corner of
the lawn, gazing upon it.

Back among trees to the left
was a flat, raised platform, ap-
parently faced with gray and
black marble, but otherwise fea-
tureless. Commager had just
gone past this when he realized
that somebody had been watch-
ing him from the top of the plat-
form as he passed.

That, at any rate, was the feel-
ing he got. He hadn’t actually

seen anyone, and when he looked
back, there was nobody there.
But the feeling not only had been
a definite and certain one — it
resumed the instant he started
walking on again. This time, he
didn’t look back.

Before he’d gone a dozen more
steps, he knew, too, just when
he’d experienced that exact sen-
sation before. It was the previous
night, while he was doing his
parapsychological experiments at
the Bay and had suddenly felt
that he was under secret and un-
friendly scrutiny.

He laughed at himself, but the
impression remained a remark-
ably vivid one. And before he
reached the entrance to the main
building which the young man in
the office had indicated to him,
he had time for the thought that
playing with the imagination, as
he was doing, might leave one
eventually on very shaky ground.

Then he was there, looking in-
to a long hallway, and Mrs. Love-
lock’s fine, deep voice greeted
him before he caught sight of
her.

“I’m so glad you could come,
Mr. Commager!” she said.

S HE WAS standing in the door
of a room that opened on the
hall to the left, and Commager
was a trifle startled by her ap-
pearance. He had expected a
large handsome woman of about

GALAXY SCIENCE FICTION

thirty, to match the voice. But
Mrs. Lovelock was not only
huge; she was shockingly ugly
and probably almost twice the
age he’d estimated. She wore a
white uniform, so Commager
asked whether she was Wilson
Knox’s nurse.

“I’ve been a registered nurse
for nearly forty years, Mr. Com-
mager,” the beautiful voice told
him. “At present, I’m attending
Dr. Knox. Would you come in
here, please?”

He followed her into the room
and she closed the door behind
them. Her big, gray face, Com-
mager decided, looked both wor-
ried and very angry.

“The reason I wasn’t more
open with you over the tele-
phone,” she told him, “was that
I was certain you wouldn’t have
taken the trouble to drive out
here if I had been. And I couldn’t
have blamed you! Won’t you sit
down, please?”

Commager took a chair and
said he was afraid he didn’t un-
derstand.

Mrs. Lovelock nodded. “I shall
give you the facts. Dr. Knox had
a very severe heart attack at
around two o’clock this morning.
I have been a member of his con-
gregation for twenty-four years,
and I arrived with a doctor short-
ly afterward. Dr. Knox is resting
comfortably now, but he is very
anxious to see you. I must let

him tell you why, Mr. Commager.
But I should like to prepare you
for what you will hear — ”

"l/TRS. LOVELOCK stared
gloomily at the carpet for
a moment and then her face
twisted briefly into a grimace of
pure rage.

“Wilson — Dr. Knox — is a
harmless old fool!” she told Com-
mager savagely. “This Antique
Christianity he worked out never
hurt anybody. They prayed to
Pan and they had their dances
and chants. And there was the
Oracle and he read out of the
Book of Pan. » .”

“I don’t know anything about
Dr. Knox’s activities,” Commager
said, not too politely.

She had thick, reddened, cap-
able hands and they were locked
together now on her lap, the
fingers twisting slowly against
one another, as if she were trying
to break something between
them.

“I was the Oracle, you see,” she
explained. “I knew it was foolish,
but I’d sit up there on the dais
in the smoke, with a veil over my
head, and I’d say whatever I
happened to think of. But this
year, Wilson brought in that Ruth
MacDonald — you know her, he
said.”

“I’ve met the lady,” Commager
admitted. “I wouldn’t say I know
her.”

THE TIES OF EARTH

“She became the Oracle! And
then she began to change every-
thing! I told Wilson he was quite
right to resist that. There are
things, Mr. Commager, that a
good Christian simply must not
do!”

Which, Commager felt, was a
remarkable statement, under the
circumstances. Mrs. Lovelock
came ponderously to her feet.

“Dr. Knox will tell you what
remains to be told,” she added
rather primly. “And, of course,
you cannot stay too long. Will
you follow me now, please?”

T HE REVEREND didn’t look
as if he were in too bad a
condition, Commager thought
when he saw him first. He was
lying in a hospital bed which had
been raised high enough to let
him gaze down at the grove out
of a window of his second-story
room.

After he’d talked a few mo-
ments, Commager felt the man
was delirious and he thought
briefly of calling back Mrs. Love-
lock or the other nurse who had
been with Wilson Knox when
they came in. But those two un-
doubtedly had been able to judge
for themselves whether they
should remain with the Reverend
or not.

“Why should they want to kill
you?” Commager asked. Knox
had been speaking of the Guides

and then had started to weep;
now he blew his nose on a piece
of tissue and made a groping
motion for Commager’s hand,
which Commager withdrew in
time.

“It was merely a matter of
business as far as I was con-
cerned, Mr. Commager. I certain-
ly had no intention of blocking
any activities of the Guides. In
fact, I should prefer not to know
about them. But when Miss Mac-
Donald, who was employed by
the Temple, upset our members,
I protested to her, sir! Isn’t that
understandable?”

“Entirely,” Commager agreed
carefully. “What did Miss Mac-
Donald do to upset them?”

“She predicted two of the con-
gregation would die before the
end of the year,” Wilson Knox
said shakily. “It caused a great
deal of alarm. Many of our
wealthier clients withdrew from
the Temple at once. It is a con-
siderable financial loss!”

The Reverend appeared ra-
tional enough on that point.
Commager inquired, “Is Miss
MacDonald one of the Guides,
Dr. Knox?”

“It’s not for me to say.” Knox
gave him a suddenly wary look.
“When she spoke to me by tele-
phone last night, I asked whether
I had offended anyone. I was, of
course, greatly distressed!” His
expression changed back to one

GALAXY SCIENCE FICTION

of profound self-pity. “But she
repeated only that it had become
necessary for me to die this week
and hung up.”

I T SEEMED an odd way at
that for the Temple’s new
Oracle to have phrased her pre-
diction, Commager thought. He
regarded Dr. Knox without much
sympathy. “So now you want me
to simply tell her not to hurt
you, eh?”

“It would be better, Mr. Com-
mager,” Knox suggested, “if you
addressed yourself directly to the
young woman called Paylar!” He
reached for his visitor’s hand
again. “I place myself under your
protection, sir! I know you won’t
refuse it!”

Which was almost precisely
what he had said as soon as the
nurses left the room, and the
reason Commager had believed
the patient was in a state of de-
lirium. Now it seemed more prob-
able that he was merely badly
mistaken.

Commager decided not to ask
why it would be better to speak
to Paylar. At any direct question
concerning the Guides, the Rev-
erend became evasive. He said
instead, “What made you decide
I could protect you, Dr. Knox?”
Knox looked downright crafty.
“I have made no inquiries about
you, sir, and I do not intend to.
I am a simple man whose life has

been devoted to providing a
measure of beauty and solace for
his fellow human beings. In a
modest way, of course. I have
never pried into the Greater
Mysteries!”

He seemed to expect approval
for that, so Commager nodded
gravely.

“I speak only of what I saw,”
Wilson Knox continued. “On Sun-
day night, I saw them attempt to
bring you directly under their
sway. Forgive me for saying, sir,
that they do not do this with an
ordinary person! I also saw them
fail and I knew they were fright-
ened. Nevertheless, you were not
destroyed.”

He tapped Commager’s hand
significantly. “That, sir, was
enough for me. I do not attempt
to pry — I have merely placed
myself under your protection!”

VII

A MAN with Secret Powers, a
man who could tell the
Guides to go jump in the Pacific,
might take a passing interest in
the gimmicks of an organization
like the Temple of Antique Chris-
tianity. So on his way out through
the grove, Commager had turned
aside to get a closer look at the
dais.

He assumed, at least, that the
gray and black marble platform
was what Mrs. Lovelock had re-

T H E TIES OF EARTH

ferred to as the seat of the Oracle,
since nothing else around seemed
suitable for the purpose.

Standing before it, he pictured
her sitting up there in the night,
veiled, a vast, featureless bulk,
announcing whatever came into
her mind in that stunning voice,
and he could see that Wilson
Knox’s congregation might well
have listened in pop-eyed fascina-
tion. Ruth MacDonald couldn’t
have been nearly as impressive.

Perhaps that was why she had
started passing out death sent-
ences.

Down on Sunset, he parked
his car at the curb and remained
in it, watching the traffic, while
he tried to digest the information
he had received — if you could
call it information.

Wilson Knox and Mrs. Love-
lock appeared to be people who
had fabricated so much fantastic
garbage for the clients of the

GALAXY SCIENCE FICTION

Temple that they had no judg-
ment left to resist the fabrica-
tions of others.

Commager’s parting from Mrs.
Lovelock had given him the im-
pression that the huge woman
also was sullenly afraid, though
she hid it much better than the
Reverend had. It could be simply
that she felt her own position in
the Temple would be lost if Knox
died; but he thought that in her
case, too, it was a more personal

fear, of the Guides, or even of
himself —

And he’d practically promised
both of them to put in a word
with Paylar to protect that re-
volting little man!

XT OWEVER, the Reverend’s
heart attack, at least, prob-
ably had been a real enough
thing. And if Ruth MacDonald
actually had telephoned a pre-
diction of death to him earlier

THE TIES OF EARTH

in the night, there was some cause
for intervention. The practice of
frightening people into their
graves was something that any-
one could reasonably insist
should be stopped!

And that, of course, brought
up the question of how he ex-
pected to stop it.

And the question, once more,
of just what that odd group of
people — who indicated they
were the Guides or associated
with them — was after.

Ruth MacDonald’s activities
concerning the Temple of An-
tique Christianity hardly seemed
to lie on the lofty, idealistic level
he’d been almost willing to
ascribe to them in theory, even
if he disliked their methods. She
was a brassy, modern young
witch, Commager thought, using
the old witchcraft tools of fear
and suggestion out of equally old
motives of material gain and
prestige.

But one couldn’t account for
Hawkes as simply as that, be-
cause Hawkes had had money
and prestige.

Commager knew least of all
about Paylar, except for the
young man called Lex Barthold,
whose connection with the others
wasn’t clear. The impression of
Paylar was still mainly that she
had a physical personality that
would be hard to match if you
liked them slender, dark and

mysterious, and with a self-assur-
ance that wasn’t aggressive like
Ruth MacDonald’s, but that
might be a great more difficult
to crack. Among the three he’d
had to deal with, she seemed to
be the leader, though that wasn’t
necessarily true.

He found himself walking
slowly down the street toward a
phone booth.

Let’s make a game of it, he
thought. Assume that what Pay-
lar had said and what the
Reverend had suspected was true
— at least in the Guides’s own
opinion — that he had turned out
to be exceptionally tough material
for their psychological gimmicks.
That he had, in fact, abilities he
didn’t yet know about himself,
but which, even in a latent state,
were sufficient to have got the
Opposition all hot and worried!

VEN IF the Guides only be-
lieved that — if they, like
Knox and his mountainous reg-
istered nurse, had played around
so long on the fringes of reality
that they were as badly confused
now as the people they’d been
misleading — his intervention
should still be effective! Particu-
larly if he informed Mrs. Love-
lock, with the proper degree of
impressiveness, that he’d passed
on the word.

A little play-acting didn’t seem
too much effort to put out to save

GALAXY SCIENCE FICTION

a human life. Even a life like
Wilson Knox’s . . .

This time, it was Paylar who
answered the telephone.

“You’ve disappointed me a
little, Mr. Commager,” she said.
“When I first heard your voice,
I was certain you were going to
invite me out to dine and dance.”
Commager assured her that
this had been his primary pur-
pose — and as soon as he’d said
it, he began to wonder whether
it wasn’t true. But business came
first, he added.

“Well, as to the business,” Pay-
lar told him demurely, “I’m not
necessarily in control of Ruth’s
activities, you know. I hadn’t
been informed that the Reverend
Knox was ill.” She paused a mo-
ment. “I’ll tell Ruth she isn’i» to
frighten your friend again. Will
that be satisfactory, Mr. Com-
mager?”

“Why, yes, it is,” Commager
said and found himself flushing.
Somehow, in her easy acceptance
of his intervention, she’d man-
aged to make him feel like a
child whose fanciful notions were
being humored by an adult. He
put the idea aside, to be investi-
gated later. “Now about where to
have dinner — ”

Paylar said she’d prefer to let
him surprise her. “But I have a
condition,” she added pleasantly.
“There’ll be no shop-talk tonight!”
Putting him on the defensive

again, Commager thought rue-
fully. He told her shop-talk had
been far from his mind and
would eight o’clock be about
right?

It would be about right, she
agreed. And then, arriving at the
store finally, some fifteen minutes
later, he found Jean Bohart wait-
ing in his office.

“Hi, Alan,” she greeted him
gloomily. “You’re taking me to
lunch. Okay?”

In one way and another, Com-
mager felt, Tuesday simply didn’t
look like a good day for business.

??T’M IN A mood today,” Jean

-*■ announced. She picked with-
out enthusiasm at a grapefruit
and watercress salad. “But you’re
not talking to me, either!”

“I was thinking,” Commager
said, “that I was glad you didn’t
look like a certain lady I met
this morning. What’s the mood
about?”

She hesitated. “I’m making my
mind up about something. I’ll
tell you tomorrow. Who was the
lady? Someone I know?”

“I doubt it. A Mrs. Lovelock.”

“I don’t know any Lovelocks.
What’s the matter with her
looks?”

“Fat,” Commager explained.

“Well,” Jean said glumly, “I’m
not that.”

She was, in fact, in spite of
her downcast expression, a model

THE TIES OF EARTH

of crisp attractiveness as usual.
A white sharkskin suit, with a
lavender veil gathered lightly at
her throat, plus a trim white hat
to one side of a blonde head —
neat, alert and healthy-looking
as an airline hostess, Commager
thought approvingly.

Jean mightn’t care for the com-
parison, though, so he didn’t tell
her. And he wasn’t going to press
her about the mood. At the rare
moments that she became re-
served, probing made her sullen.
Probably something to do with
Ira again.

“I called off the Taylors for
tomorrow,” she told him sudden-
ly, with some traces of embarrass-
ment, “so we could talk. You
don’t mind, do you?”

“Of course not,” Commager
said hesitantly. Then it struck
him suddenly: they’d had a date
for an all-day fishing party Wed-
nesday, Jean and he and the Tay-
lor couple. He’d forgotten com-
pletely!

“That’s all right then,” Jean
said, looking down at her plate.
She still seemed curiously shy
and Commager realized that this
was no ordinary problem. “Will
you sleep at your cabin tonight?”

“Sure,” he said, concerned —
he was very fond of Jean. His
sleeping at the cabin was the
usual arrangement on such occa-
sions; he’d have everything ready
there for the day before anyone

else arrived and then they’d be
off to an early start.

“I’ll be there tomorrow at
eight,” said Jean. She gave him
a quick, unhappy smile. “I love
you, Alan — you never ask ques-
tions when you shouldn’t!”

S O HE HAD two dates at eight
now, twelve hours apart. If
it hadn’t been for the attendant
problems, Commager decided,
his social life might have looked
exceptionally well-rounded at the
moment to almost anybody!

But he didn’t seem to be doing
a very good job qf keeping clear
of attendant problems. It had
struck him for the first time, while
they were lunching, that Jean
Bohart might easily have been
the prototype of the figment of
Lona. There were obvious gen-
eral similarities, and the dissimi-
larities might have been his own
expression of the real-life fact
that Jean was Ira’s wife.

But he felt himself moving into
a mentally foggy area at that
point. There had been occasional
light love-making between them,
too light to really count; but
Jean certainly had remained
emotionally absorbed with Ira,
though she tended to regard him
superficially with a kind of fond
exasperation.

Commager didn’t really know
how he felt about Jean, except
that he liked her more than any-

GALAXY SCIENCE FICTION

one else he could think of. There
was a warning awareness that if
he tried to push any deeper into
that particular fog right now, he
might get himself emotionally
snagged again.

It didn’t seem advisable to be-
come emotionally snagged. There
were still too many other doubt-
ful issues floating around.

One of the other issues re-
solved itself — in a way — very

shortly, with the ringing of the
office telephone.

It was Elaine Lovelock once
more.

“Mr. Commager,” she said,
“about the matter we were dis-
cussing — ”

He began to tell her he had
spoken to Paylar, but she in-
terrupted him: “Dr. Knox died
an hour ago!”

— JAMES H. SCHMITZ

CONCLUDED NEXT MONTH

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THE TIES OF EARTH

By BILL CLOTHIER

THE SEMANTIC WAR

Illustrated by WES

Perhaps there have been causes
for slaughter just as silly as
this was — but try to find one!

T HE RAIN pours down
chill out of a sullen sky.
My pace quickens as I
try to regain the relative warmth
and shelter of the cavern before
I become thoroughly drenched. I
cannot afford to catch a cold.
All alone as I am and with no
medicine, I would stand too great
a chance of a quick death. These
lowering Oregon skies still hold
traces of nameless disease in their
writhing cloud tendrils. I am not

just afraid of a cold. That would
only be the key for some other
malady to use and strike me
down forever.

I see the cave up ahead and
feel a sense of contentment as I
draw near and then duck inside
its stony mouth. The rain hisses
without, but inside it is dry. There
is a heavy cow-hide hanging on
a peg in the wall and I take it
down and wrap it around me.
Soon I will be warm. Once more

GALAXY SCIENCE FICTION

I may stave off my ultimate end.

Sometimes I wonder why I
wish to put it off. Certainly, ac-
cording to my old standards,
there is no point in living. But
somehow I feel that the mere
fact of living is justification in
itself. Even for such a life as
mine.

I didn’t always feel this way.
But then circumstances change
and people change with them. I
changed my circumstances more
than myself, but I had no alterna-
tive. So now I exist.

I suppose I should be content.
After all, I am alive and, in my
own simple way, I enjoy life. I
can remember people who asked
nothing more than to be allowed
to live — to exist. Ironically
enough, I always considered them
sub-normal. I felt that a man
should strive to do something
that would not only perpetuate
the happiness of his own life but
that of his fellow-men. Some-
thing that would make life more
beautiful, and easier, and more
kind.

I T WAS with this feeling that
I applied myself as a student
of philosophy at Stanford Uni-
versity. And the strengthening of
this same belief led me to take
up teaching and embrace it as
the only way of obtaining genu-
ine happiness. My personal phil-
osophy was simple. I would learn

about life in all its real and sym-
bolic meanings and then teach it
to my pupils, each of whom, I
felt sure, were thirsting for the
knowledge that I was extracting
from my cultural environment. I
would show them the meaning
behind things. That, I felt, was
the key to successful living.

Now it seems strangely pathe-
tic that I should have essayed
such an impossible task. But even
a professor of philosophy can be
mistaken and become confused.

I remember when I first be-
came aware of the movement.
For years, we had been drilling
certain precepts into the soft, im-
pressionable heads of those stu-
dents who came under our influ-
ence. Liberalism, some called it,
the right to take the values
accumulated by society over a
period of hundreds of years and
bend them to fit whatever idea
or act was contemplated. By such
methods, it was possible to fit
the mores to the deed, not the
deed to the mores. Oh, it was a
wonderful theory, one that prom-
ised to project all human activi-
ties entirely beyond good and
evil.

However, I digress. It was a
spring morning at Berkeley, Cali-
fornia, when I had my first ink-
ling of the movement. I was
sitting in my office gazing out
the window and considering life
in my usual contemplative fash-

THE SEMANTIC WAR

GALAXY SCIENCE FICTION

ion. I might say I was being
rather smug. I was thinking how
fortunate I was to have been
graduated from Stanford with
such high honors, and how my
good luck had stayed with me
until I received my doctor’s de-
gree in a famous Eastern uni-
versity and came out to take an
associate professorship at the
Berkeley campus.

I was watching the hurrying
figures below on the crosswalks
and idly noting the brilliant green
of the shrubbery and the trees
and the lawn. I was mixing up
Keats with a bit of philosophy
and thoroughly enjoying myself.
Knowledge is truth, truth beauty,
I mused, that is all we know on
Earth, and all we need to know.

There was a knock on my door
and I said come in, reluctantly
abandoning my train of thought
which had just picked up Shakes-
peare, whom I was going to con-
sider as two-thirds philosopher
and one-third poet. I have never
felt that the field of literature
had the sole claim to Shakes-
peare’s greatness.

P ROFESSOR Lillick came in,
visibly perturbed. Lillick was
a somewhat erratic individual
(for a professor, at least) and he
was often perturbed. Once he be-
came excited about the possibili-
ties of the campus shrubbery
being stunted and discolored by

the actions of certain dogs living
on campus. He was not a phil-
osophy professor, of course, but
a member of the political science
group.

“Carlson,” he asked nervously,
“have you heard about it yet?”

“I have no idea,” I returned
good-naturedly. “Heard about
what?”

He looked behind him as if
he thought he might be followed.
Then he whirled around, his
sharp-featured face alight with
feeling. “Carlson — the Wistick
dufels the Moraddy!” And he
stared at me intently, his gimlet
eyes almost blazing.

I stared back at him blankly.

“You haven’t heard!” he ex-
claimed. “I thought surely you
would know about it. You’re al-
ways talking about freedom to
apply thought for the good of
humanity. Well, we’re finally go-
ing to do something about it.
You’ll see. Keep your ears open,
Carlson.” Then he turned and
started out of the room. He
paused at the threshold and fixed
me again with his ferretlike eyes.
“The Wistick dufels the Morad-
dy!” he said, and vanished
through the door.

And that was my first unheed-
ed omen of what was to come. I
paid little attention to it. Lillick
wasn’t the sort of man who in-
spired attention. As a matter of
fact, I considered reporting him

THE SEMANTIC WAR

to the head of his department as
being on the verge of a nervous
breakdown. But I didn’t. In those
days, nervous breakdowns were
a common occurrence around
college campuses. The education-
al profession was a very hazard-
ous occupation. One Southern
university, for example, reported
five faculty suicides during spring
quarter.

TN THE days that followed,

however, I began to realize
that there was some sort of move-
ment being fostered by the stu-
dent body. It couldn’t be defined,
but it could be felt and seen. The
students began to form groups
and hold meetings — often with-
out official sanction. What they
were about could not be discov-
ered, but some of the results soon
became evident.

For one thing, certain students
began to walk on one side of the
street and the other students
walked on the other side. The
ones who used the north side of
the street wore green sweaters
with white trousers or skirts, and
the south-side students wore
white sweaters with green trou-
sers or skirts. It even got to the
point where those in green
sweaters went only to classes in
the morning and those in white
attended the afternoon sessions.

Then the little white cards be-
gan to appear. They were sent

through the mail. They were
slipped under doorways and in
desk drawers. They turned up
beside your plate at dinner and
under your pillow at night. They
were pasted on your front door
in the morning and they ap-
peared in the fly-leaves of your
books. They were even hung on
trees like fruit, and surely no
fruit ever spored so queer a seed-
ling.

They said either one thing or
the other: THE WISTICK

DUFELS THE MORADDY, or
THE MORADDY DUFELS
THE WISTICK. Which card be-
longed to what group was not
immediately clear. It was not un-
til the riots broke out that the
thing began to be seen in its
proper perspective. And then it
was too late.

When the first riot started, it
was assumed that the university
officials and the police could
quell it in a very short time. But
strangely enough, as additional
police were called in, the battle
raged even more fiercely. I could
see part of the affair from my
window and therefore was able
to understand why the increas-
ing police force only added to
the turmoil. They were fighting
one another! And through the din
could be heard the wild shouts
of “The Wistick dufels the
Moraddy!” or “The Moraddy
dufels the Wistick!”

GALAXY SCIENCE FICTION

The final blow came when I
saw the Registrar and the Dean
of Men struggling fiercely in one
of the hedge-rows, and heard the
Dean of Men yell in wild exulta-
tion as he brought a briefcase
down on the Registrar’s head,
“The Wistick dufels the Morad-
dy!”

Then someone broke in
through the door of my office. I
turned in alarm and saw a huge
three-letter man standing only a
few feet from me. He had been
in one of my classes. I remem-
bered something about his being
the hardest driving fullback on
the Pacific coast. He was cer-
tainly the dumbest philosophy
student I ever flunked. His hair
was mussed and he was wild-
eyed. He had blood on his face
and chest, and his clothes were
torn and grass-stained.

“The Wistick dufels the
Moraddy,” he said.

“Get out of my office,” I told
him coldly, “and stay out.”

“So you’re on the other side,”
he snarled. “I hoped you would
be.”

He started toward me and I
seized a bookend on my desk
and tried to strike him with it.
But he brushed it aside and came
on in. His first blow nearly broke
my arm and as I dropped my
guard due to the numbing pain,
he struck me solidly on the side
of the jaw.

When I recovered conscious-
ness, I was lying by the side of
my desk where I had fallen. My
head ached and my neck was
stiff. I got painfully to my feet
and then noticed the big square
of cardboard pinned to the door
of my office. It was lettered in
red pencil and in past tense said,
“The Wistick dufelled the
Moraddy.”

HP HE UPRISINGS arose spon-
taneously in all parts of the
country. They were not confined
to colleges. They were not con-
fined to any particular group.
They encompassed nearly the
entire population and the fervor
aroused by their battle-cry,
whichever one it might be, was
beyond all comprehension.

I could not understand either
slogan’s meaning — and there
were others like myself. On sev-
eral occasions, I attempted to find
out, but I was beaten twice and
threatened with a pistol the third
time, so I gave up all such efforts.
I was never much given to any
sort of physical violence.

One night, I went home thor-
oughly disheartened by the state
of affairs. The university was
hardly functioning. Nearly the
entire faculty, including the col-
lege president, had been drawn
into one camp or the other. Their
actions were utterly abhorrent to
me. If the professor was a green-

THE SEMANTIC WAR

top, or Wistickian, he lectured
only to green-tops. If he belonged
to the Moraddians, or white-top
faction, they were the only ones
who could enter his classroom.

The two groups were so evenly
divided that open violence was
frowned upon as a means of at-
taining whatever end they had
in view. They were biding their
time and gathering strength for
fresh onslaughts on each other.

As I say, I went home feeling
very discouraged. My wife was
in the kitchen preparing dinner,
and I went in and sat down at
the table while she worked. The
daily paper was lying on the
table, its headlines loaded with
stories of bloodshed and strife
throughout the nation. I glanced
through them. Lately, there
seemed to be a sort of pattern
forming.

East of the Mississippi, the
general slogan was emerging as
the Moraddy dufelling the Wis-
tick. West of the Mississippi, the
Wistick was receiving the greater
support. And it seemed that the
younger people and the women
preferred the Moraddy, while
elderly people and most men
were on the side of the Wistick.

I commented on this.

My wife answered briefly, “Of
course. Anyone should know that
the Moraddy will win out.” She
went on with the preparations
for dinner, not looking at me.

I sat stunned for a moment.
Great God in Heaven, not my
wife!

“Am I to understand that you
are taking any part of this seri-
ously?” I asked with some heat.
“The whole thing is a horrible,
pointless prank!”

She turned and faced me
squarely. “Not to me. I say the
Moraddy will win out. I want it
to — and I think you’d be wise
to get on the bandwagon while
there’s still time.”

I realized she was serious. Dead
serious. I tried a cautious query:
“Just what does the dufellation
of the Wistick by the Moraddy
mean?”

A ND IT made her angry. It
actually made her angry!
She switched off the front burner
and walked past me into the liv-
ing room. I didn’t think she was
going to answer, but she did —
sort of.

“There is no excuse for an egg-
head in your position not know-
ing what it means.” Her voice
was strained and tense. “If you
had any perception whatever, you
would understand what the
Moraddy has to give the Ameri-
can people. It’s our only hope.
And you’ve got to take sides.
You’re either for the Moraddy
or the Wistick — you can’t take
the middle way.”

I felt completely isolated.

GALAXY SCIENCE FICTION

“Wait! I don’t know what it
means — ”

“Forget it,” she broke in. “I
should have known. You were
born, you have lived, and you
will die an egghead in an ivory
tower. Just remember — the
Moraddy dufels the Wistick!”
And she swept on upstairs to
pack. And out of my life.

And that’s the way it was.
Whatever malignant poison had
seeped into the collective brain
of the nation, it was certainly a
devastating leveler of all sorts of
institutions and values. Wives
left husbands and husbands left
wives. Joint bank accounts van-
ished. Families disintegrated.
Wall street crumpled.

Developments were swift and
ominous. The Army split up into
various groups. Most of the en-
listed men favored the Moraddy,
but the officers and older non-
coms pledged the Wistickian
faith. Their power was sufficient
to hold many in line, but a con-
siderable number in the lower
ranks deserted and joined forces
with the Moraddians, who held
the eastern half of the country.

The Wisticks ruled the western
half with an iron hand, and all
signs pointed toward civil war.
Labor and military authorities
conscripted the entire population
regardless of age, sex or religious
convictions.

For my own part, I slipped

away from the campus and fled
north into the Oregon mountains.
It was not that I was afraid to
fight, but I rebelled at the abso-
lute stupidity of the whole thing.
The idea — fighting because of
a few words!

But they did.

The destruction was frightful.
However, it was not as bad as
many had thought it would be.
The forces of the Wistick leveled
the city of New York, true, but
it took three H-bombs to do the
job, instead of one, as the Air
Force had claimed. In retaliation,
San Francisco and Los Angeles
were destroyed in a single night
by cleverly placed atom bombs
smuggled in by a number of fifth-
columnist wives who gained
access to the cities under the
pretext of returning to their hus-
bands. This was a great victory
for the Moraddians, even though
the women had to blow them-
selves up to accomplish their
mission.

The Moraddian forces were
slowly beaten back toward the
Atlantic shores. They were very
cunning fighters and they had
youthful courage to implement
that cunning. But their overall
policy lacked the stability and
long-range thinking necessary to
the prosecution of total war. One
day they might overrun many
populous areas and the next day,
due to the constant bickering and

THE SEMANTIC WAR

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quarreling among their own
armies, they would lose all they
had won, and more, too.

Finally, in desperation, they
loosed their most horrible
weapon, germ warfare. But they
forgot to protect themselves
against their own malignity. The
Semantic War ground to a shud-
dering halt. The carrion smell of
death lay round the world.

The dufellation of the Wistick
and the Moraddy.

S O HERE I am, scuttling
around in the forests like a
lonely pack-rat. It is not the sort
of life I would choose if there

were any other choice. Yet life
has become very simple.

I enjoy the simple things and
I enjoy them with gusto. When I
find food that suits my stomach,
I am happy. When I quench my
thirst, I am happy. When I see
a beautiful sunset from one of
my mountain crags, I am happy.
It takes little when you have
little, and there have been few
men who have had less.

Only one thing troubles me. I
suppose it doesn’t matter, but I
go on wondering.

, I wonder which side was right.
I mean really right.

— BILL CLOTHIER

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Galaxy Publishing Corp., 421 Hudson Street, New York 14, N. Y.

GALAXY SCIENCE FICTION

for your information

FOR YOUR INFORMATION

By WILLY LEY

I T WAS DURING the year
1609 that Galileo Galilei
of Pisa, then Professor of
Mathematics at Padua, learned
about the invention of a Dutch-
man involving optical lenses,
which enabled its user to see
distant things as if they were
nearby. A small amount of ex-
perimentation sufficed to repro-
duce the instrument which had
not yet been named “telescope”
— Galilei himself referred to it
as the occhiale when writing
Italian and the perspicillum when

writing Latin.

Within a few months, he had
made quite a number of revolu-
tionary astronomical discoveries.
He saw mountains on the Moon.
He observed that Venus shows
phases, just as the Moon does.
He “resolved” the Milky Way
into countless stars. He saw dark
spots on the Sun. He discovered
the four largest moons of Jupiter.
He noticed that there was some-
thing strange about the shape of
Saturn. And he wrote it all down
in his Sidereal Messenger, which
appeared in 1610.

Everything Galilei saw with
his new instrument can be seen
with a reasonably good pair of
binoculars or with a pocket tele-
scope. In fact, my own 10-power
pocket telescope — actually a
target ’scope from a tank gun
— is superior in many respects
to Galilei’s occhiale, even dis-

counting its much smaller size.
The interesting point is that so
many of the astronomical facts
discovered by Galilei are almost,
but only almost, visible with the
naked eye.

I don’t know whether it is true
that a very few people are able
to see the four large satellites of
Jupiter without any optical aid,
as Jules Verne stated in one of
his stories. But it is true that
some of the major lunar features
can be recognized after you have
studied a good large photograph
of the Moon. You could never
draw them from naked eye ob-
servation, but once you have
“learned” them, you can look for
them with some success. Like-
wise the phases of Venus are
very close to naked-eye visibility,
but only close. To really see them
needs a few magnifications.

Lunar map by J. Keill, first published
in 1718.

GALAXY SCIENCE FICTION

The first drawings of Mars by Fontana.

TY7ELL, AS soon as there was
a telescope, however primi-
tive it may appear in retrospect,
it was possible to see and to draw
those things, and the planets sat
for their first portraits, beginning
with the Moon. Figure 1 shows
a drawing of the Moon by Galilei
himself. It may not be the very
first telescopic drawing of the
Moon made — Galilei probably
made several and published only
the best — but it certainly is
one of the earliest.

The round object visible di-
rectly on the terminator is in-
dubitably the Mare serenitatis,
while the white spot with the
two white lines going to (or
from) it is certainly the crater
we now call Tycho. The roughly
triangular shadow on the bright

half near Tycho is probably
meant to be the Mare humorum
and the irregularities below the
Mare serenitatis may be the
Mare frigoris, dimly seen.

Compared to Galilei’s sketch,
the lunar map drawn by the
Scotsman John Keill just a cen-
tury later looks virtually modern
(Fig. 2). It was printed in Ox-
ford in 1718 in a book entitled
Introductio ad veram Astro-
nomiam; all the Mare plains are
recognizably drawn and many of
the more conspicuous craters are
entered, even with indications of
their systems of “rays.”

Moving on to the planets, Fig.
3 shows the first drawings of
Mars made by Francesco Fon-
tana in 1636 and 1638. Since
Mars moves around the Sun out-

FOR YOUR INFORMATION

1672

AUGUST 13th

Two drawings of Mars

side the orbit of Earth, it can
never show phases like Venus.
Only a small portion of the night
side of Mars could be seen from
Earth when the relative positions
are favorable. Since there is noth-
ing luminous on the portion of
the Martian globe that happens
to have night, it simply disap-
pears from view. Fontana, in one
of his drawings, caught this maxi-
mum phase that Mars can show.

But the dark portion in the
center and the dark rim near the
edge of the disk does not cor-
respond to anything known, indi-
cating that Fontana’s telescope
must have been rather imperfect.
The two drawings of Mars made
by Christian Huyghens only a
few decades later are much bet-

1659

NOVEMBER 28th

by Christian Huyghens.

ter. The darkish triangular area
is probably meant to be the one
now called Syrtis major and one
of the two drawings shows a
rather clear indication of the
south polar cap of Mars (Fig. 4).

But Mars is a difficult object
even now, just because most of
its markings are so faint. More-
over, Mars can be seen well only
when it comes close to Earth,
roughly every two years and two
months. Giant Jupiter is a far
better object.

It is bigger, to begin with, and
it is so far distant from the Earth
at any time that it does not make
too much difference whether both
planets are in neighboring sectors
of their orbits as seen from the
Sun. Even the earliest drawings

GALAXY SCIENCE FICTION

Septrrrtrio

CASSINI, 1691.

Three typical drawings of Jupiter made by
various observers of the 17th century.

of Jupiter by Bartoli, Grimaldi,
Cassini and Hooke (Fig. 5 and
6) can be recognized at a glance
for what they are supposed to be.

J EAN DOMINIQUE Cassini’s
drawing is not only one of the
early drawings of Jupiter; it is
also the first to show the feature
which later became famous as
the Red Spot. That Red Spot —
it isn’t always red incidently; it
has been seen as orange, yellow,

lavender and plain gray — was
greeted as a great novelty when
it became faintly visible in 1872.
Eight years later, in 1880, it was
most pronounced and of a par-
ticularly vivid color.

Speculation ran high then.
Some astronomers thought they
were lucky enough to actually
observe the birth of still another
moon of Jupiter. Remember that
in 1880 it was still generally be-
lieved that the satellites of the
planets had been produced by
their primaries by flinging por-
tions of their own masses into
space. Maybe here was a lucky
chance to observe this very pro-
cess.

Jupiter as drawn by Hook on
June 26, 1666.

FOR YOUR INFORMATION

Other astronomers believed,
however, that they were seeing
just the opposite — not the birth
of a new moon, but the funeral
of an old moon or at least a
potential moon. They thought
that one of the asteroids, pulled
out of its belt by Jupiter’s gravi-
tational might, had crashed and
that the Red Spot was the reflec-
tion of enormous lava flows
caused by the impact.

In the middle of the spirited
debate, somebody discovered an
older drawing of Jupiter which
showed the Spot, although it was
very faint and not labeled “red.”
And then, knowing what to look
for, it was traced farther back,
the trail ending with Cassini’s
picture. In short, the Spot has
been there for centuries, being
sometimes well defined and some-
times not — and we still don’t
know what it is.

A strange case, to my mind, is
presented by Fig. 7. The drawing
was made by Johannes Hevelius
(real name : Hewelcke) of Dan-
zig who built himself an observa-
tory in 1641 and who is usually
mentioned with much praise for
his observations of the Moon and
his improved star catalogue. The
lunar maps of Hevelius consti-
tuted progress, but his drawing
of Jupiter is practically meaning-
less. If it did not have the name
of the planet engraved on it, one
might think it an early attempt at

drawing the faint markings of
the daylight side of Mercury or
perhaps the disk of Venus.

By the time Hevelius built his
observatory, it was known to

„»,*« *©

# # •

* *®

JAN 10

JAN. II

JAN. 12

* ©

JAN. 13

Galileo Galilei's observations of Jupiter in
January 1610, proving the existence of the
four large moons.

GALAXY SCIENCE FICTION

Five drawings of Saturn from 1610-1650.

everybody interested in astron-
omy that Jupiter had four large
moons. They are so easily visible
with any telescope of any kind
that Galilei must have seen them
the very first time he pointed his
occhiale at Jupiter. But at first
he may have thought that he
just saw a few stars which hap-
pened to lie in the direction of
Jupiter.

To be sure they were satellites,
one had to establish that they
move around the planet and in
January, 1610, Galilei watched
for this particular phenomenon.
The drawings reproduced as Fig.
8 were the result. Of course Gali-
lei just marked their positions,
but even so, they are the first
drawing of satellites of another
planet.

VW^HEN IT came to Saturn,
™ something new entered the
picture. Every schoolboy — and
quite a number of the fathers of
schoolboys — knows nowadays
that Saturn has rings. And know-
ing that Saturn has rings and
having seen drawings of the rings
of Saturn, everybody can “see”
them at once when given access
to a telescope. But the early tele-
scopes were small and weak. In
addition, nobody had ever even
guessed that a planet may have
rings.

There was nothing else in na-
ture which compared with what

FOR YOUR INFORMATION

Saturn at drawn by Huyghens and Castini, the latter being the first to show
Cassini's Division."

the telescope showed, wavering
because of the constant move-
ment of the atmosphere and with
beautiful-looking but annoying
rainbow fringes. To add to these
difficulties, the planet itself ap-
peared much smaller than Jupi-
ter. We now know that it actually
is somewhat smaller than Jupiter,
but the main reason for the ap-
parent smallness was simply its
greater distance, for the orbit of

Saturn is 400 million miles be-
yond Jupiter’s.

Galilei’s impression of this dif-
ficult planet was that it might
be a triple planet (see Fig. 9, top
drawing) while, to Christopher
Scheiner, it looked as if the two
smaller spheres were attached to
the main body. To Pierre Gas-
sendi, it appeared rather as hav-
ing the general shape of a football
with two large dark holes in it.

GALAXY SCIENCE FICTION

Johannes Hevelius saw and drew
the appearance fairly correctly,
but was at a loss to explain what
he saw.

The drawing made by Gio-
vanni Battista Riccioli (Fig. 9,
bottom drawing) also looks quite
correct to us, though it seems
that Riccioli believed that the
two “handles” were somehow at-
tached to the planet’s body.

It is somewhat strange that
none of these early astronomers
who strained their eyes to under-
stand the mysterious shape of
Saturn noticed Saturn’s satellite,
Titan. Though pretty far away,
it is, after all, not only Saturn’s
largest satellite, but by far the
largest one in the whole Solar
System, surpassing Mercury, the
smallest of the planets, by more
than 500 miles in diameter. Mer-
cury’s diameter is almost exactly
3000 miles, while that of Titan
is around 3550 miles.

The man who finally did dis-
cover Titan also solved the prob-
lem of the “appendages” of Sat-
urn. He was the Dutchman
Christian Huyghens, who lived at
The Hague and who built himself
a telescope which could magnify
up to 100 times. It was not a
large telescope, for it had an
aperture of only 2-1/3 inches,
with a focal length of 23 feet.

TTUYGHENS discovered Titan
in 1655 and, during the fol-
lowing year, he realized that the
appendages were actually a flat
ring around the planet, not touch-
ing it at any point (Fig. 10, top).
Knowing that it was a flat and
unattached ring did not reveal
anything about its nature, of
course, but just then the time
approached that was favorable
for discovering a little more de-
tail.

The ring always maintains the

Cassini's drawing marking the
discovery of Saturn's moon Rhea on December 23rd 1672.

FOR YOUR INFORMATION

same “attitude” in space, and as
Saturn and Earth are moving
around the Sun, we see the ring
more or less “open” depending
on the mutual positions. It can
and does happen that we see the
ring edge on. Since it is quite
thin, it simply disappears from
view in that position, except for
observers with very powerful
telescopes.

The other possible extreme is
that we can see even the farther
rim of the ring raised a bit above
the rim of the sphere of the
planet itself — Riccioli caught
this position in his drawing. When
Huyghens made his discovery,
the ring presented itself in an
intermediate aspect, but in the
following years it “opened up”
some more.

The first observers to notice a
detail on the ring were the broth-
ers Ball in Minehead, England,
who reported that they had seen,
in the late evening of October
13, 1665, that the ring showed
a black line. But apparently no
conclusions were drawn and the
statement itself was more or less
forgotten.

In 1668, Jean Dominique Cas-
sini, following an invitation by
Louis XIV of France, gave up
his professorship at Bologna and
moved to Paris. And just ten
years after the announcement of
the black line by the brothers
Ball, Cassini saw it very clearly

himself and continued to watch
for it to see whether it was a
permanent marking. In 1676, he
made a drawing which he pub-
lished (Fig. 10, bottom) and the
main gap has been referred to
as “Cassini’s Division” ever since,
and the “ring” became “rings.”

Because Cassini watched Sat-
urn so carefully for the sake of
the black line on or in the ring,
it was very nearly inevitable that
he should also discover some of
the other moons of Saturn. Both
Japetus and Rhea are large, with
a diameter of around 1000 miles
each, and Cassini discovered both
of them: Japetus in 1671 and
Rhea in 1672 (Fig. 11). In 1684,
he found two more: Tethys and
Dione.

We’ve come a long way since
those first portraits of major dis-
coveries in the Solar System —
but we couldn’t have done it
without them and similar patient
observations. Unlike old family
pictures, they aren’t a bit laugh-
able.

The real miracle is that so
much was learned with so little
in the way of equipment.

ANY QUESTIONS?

Would you please tell me what
the Doppler effect is?

Mike Davenport
8014 Broadleat Avenue
Van Nuys, Calif.

GALAXY SCIENCE FICTION

The Doppler effect is named
after Christian Johann Doppler,
an Austrian physicist who died
in 1853. He did not “discover”
it in the customary sense of the
word; he reasoned that it had
to exist. Experimental proof
was later established by others.

To understand the principle,
imagine that you have a gadget
which sends out 1000 separate
impulses per second, such as
1000 very short bursts of radio
waves. If you move rapidly
away from this gadget, you will
receive less than 1000 impulses
per second. If you approach it
rapidly, you’ll receive more
than 1000 impulses per second.

A sound is actually a succes-
sion of such impulses, the
sound waves. If you approach
the source of the sound rapidly,
you’ll “receive” more of them
per second, which sounds like
a higher note. Moving away
from the sound source pro-
duces a lower note.

Experimentally, this can be
shown quite easily by driving
past an electric hell. At the
instant you pass it, it ‘seems to
acquire a lower pitch. The
whistle of a train passing the
observer seems to undergo the
same change.

Doppler predicted this effect
in 1842 and it was proved ex-
perimentally for sound waves
for the first time by Buys-Ballot

FOR YOUR INFORMATION

■'■■•V: ^ ;;

in 1845. Proof that light waves
produce the Doppler effect was
first given by Fizeau in 1848.

The Doppler effect is very
useful for establishing the velo-
cities of bodies receding from
or approaching the observer
along the line of sight.

Recently I was told by a friend
that there may be some giant
sloths still living. What is the
case for this?

Frank E. Goodwyn
9709 Lorain Avenue
Silver Springs, Md.

The somewhat paradoxical
answer is that there is no case
for living giant sloths right
now, hut that some zoologists
once thought they had one.

It was during the early dec-
ades of the 19th century that
the giant sloth became known
— as a fossil, naturally. The
great problem then was just
when it had lived and, more
specifically, whether primitive
Man in America and the giant
sloth had ever met. When evi-
dence for contemporary exist-
ence of giant sloth and Man in
South America was found, an-
other discovery came to light.

Almost at the southern end
of the South American contin-
ent, there is an inlet which was
named Ultima Esperanza, and
a retired German sea captain

by the name of Eberliard built
himself a ranch there. Some-
where on that ranch was the
skin of a large animal and
when a piece of the skin came
into the hands of a professional
zoologist, it turned out to be
the skin of a giant sloth.

It was then that Professor
Florentino Ameghino of Argen-
tina announced that the giant
sloth probably was not extinct,
but had merely grown very
rare. He quoted the experience
of one Ramon Lista who told
of having been startled by a
large unknown animal one
night while camping in the in-
terior.

Since the genus of giant
sloth Ameghino expected to be
surviving was Mylodon, he
coined the name of Neomylo-
don listai for the living species.

A search of early descrip-
tions of South American ani-
mals also yielded several suspi-
cious passages. Ameghino said
that the native languages con-
tained a name for an animal
which could only be Neomylo-
don. The result of all this was
that a British newspaper or-
ganized an expedition.

The expedition return empty-
handed and some later news-
paper accounts may not be
entirely truthful.

With modern methods like
radio-carbon dating, it would

be possible to establish the true
age of that skin, but I don’t
believe that this has been done.
However, various remains of
giant sloth from Texas have
been so dated; the figures ran
to ages of from 8,000 to 12,000
years. This confirms the other
evidence that early American
Man and giant sloth met.

That the interior of South
America may still harbor sur-
vivors cannot be categorically
denied. But there is no proof,
either.

— WILLY LEY

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Name

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City State

By PHILIP K. DICK

Naturally, Man should want to stand on his

own two feet . . . but how can he when his own

machines cut the ground out from under him?

GALAXY SCIENCE FICTION

T ENSION hung over the
three waiting men. They
smoked, paced back and
forth, kicked aimlessly at weeds
growing by the side of the road.
A hot noonday sun glared down
on brown fields, rows of neat
plastic houses, the distant line of
mountains to the west.

“Almost time,” Earl Perine
said, knotting his skinny hands
together. “It varies according to
the load, a half-second for every
additional pound.”

Bitterly, Morrison answered.
“You’ve got it plotted? You’re as
bad as it is. Let’s pretend it just
happens to be late.”

The third man said nothing.
O’Neill was visiting from another
settlement; he didn’t know Perine
and Morrison well enough to ar-
gue with them. Instead, he
crouched down and arranged the
papers clipped to his aluminum
check-board. In the blazing sun,
O’Neill’s arms were tanned, fur-
ry, glistening with sweat. Wiry,
with tangled gray hair, horn-rim-
med glasses, he was older than
the other two. He wore slacks, a
sports shirt and crepe-soled
shoes. Between his fingers, his
fountain pen glittered, metallic
and efficient.

W HAT’RE you writing?”
Perine grumbled.

“I’m laying out the procedure
we’re going to employ,” O’Neill

AUTOFAC

said mildly. “Better to systemize
it now, instead of trying at ran-
dom. We want to know what we
tried and what didn’t work.
Otherwise we’ll go around in a
circle. The problem we have here
is one of communication; that’s
how I see it.”

“Communication,” Morrison
agreed in his deep, chesty voice.
“Yes, we can’t get in touch with
the damn thing. It comes, leaves
off its load and goes on — there’s
no contact between us and it.”

“It’s a machine,” Perine said
excitedly. “It’s dead — blind and
deaf.”

“But it’s in contact with the
outside world,” O’Neill pointed
out. “There has to be some way
to get to it. Specific semantic sig-
nals are meaningful to it; all we
have to do is find those signals.
Rediscover, actually. Maybe half
a dozen out of a billion possibi-
lities.”

A low rumble interrupted the
three men. They glanced up,
wary and alert. The time had
come.

“Here it is,” Perine said.
“Okay, wise guy, let’s see you
make one single change in its
routine.”

The truck was massive, rumb-
ling under its tightly packed
load. In many ways, it resembled
conventional human-operated
transportation vehicles, but with
one exception — there was no

driver’s cabin. The horizontal
surface was a loading stage, and
the part that would normally be
the headlights and radiator grill
was a fibrous spongelike mass of
receptors, the limited sensory ap-
paratus of this mobile utility ex-
tension.

Aware of the three men, the
truck slowed to a halt, shifted
gears and pulled on its emergency
brake. A moment passed as re-
lays moved into action; then a
-portion of the loading surface
tilted and a cascade of heavy
cartons spilled down onto the
brown dust of the roadway. With
the objects fluttered a detailed
inventory sheet.

“You know what to do,”
O’Neill said rapidly. “Hurry up,
before it gets out of here.”

Expertly, grimly, the three men
grabbed up the deposited cartons
and ripped the protective wrap-
pers from them. Objects gleamed:
a binocular microscope, a port-
able radio, heaps of plastic dish-
es, medical supplies, razor blades,
clothing, food. Most of the ship-
ment, as usual, was food. The
three men systematically began
smashing the objects. In a few
minutes, there was nothing but a
chaos of debris littered around
them.

“That’s that,” O’Neill panted,
stepping back. He fumbled for
his check-sheet. “Now let’s see
what it does.”

GALAXY SCIENCE FICTION

JTVHE truck had begun to move
away; abruptly it stopped and
backed toward them. Its recep-
tors had taken in the fact that the
three men had demolished the
dropped-off portion of the load.
It spun in a grinding half-circle
and came around to face its re-
ceptor bank in their direction. Up
went its antenna; it had begun
communicating with the factory.
Instructions were on the way.

A second, identical load was
tilted and shoved off the truck.

“We failed,” Perine groaned as
a duplicate inventory sheet flut-
tered after the new load. “We
destroyed all that stuff for noth-
ing.”

“What now?” Morrison asked
O’Neill. “What’s the next strate-
gem on your board?”

“Give me a hand.” O’Neill
grabbed up a carton and lugged
it back to the truck. Sliding the
carton onto the platform, he turn-
ed for another. The other two
men followed clumsily after him.
They put the load back onto the
truck. As the truck started for-
ward, the last square box was
again in place.

The truck hesitated. Its recep-
tors registered the return of its
load. From within its works came
a low sustained buzzing.

“This may drive it crazy,”
O’Neill commented, sweating. “It
went through its operation and
accomplished nothing.”

The truck made a short, abor-
tive move toward going on. Then
it swung purposefully around
and, in a blur of speed, again
dumped the load onto the road.

“Get them!” O’Neill yelled.
The three men grabbed up the
cartons and feverishly reloaded
them. But as fast as the cartons
were shoved back on the horizon-
tal stage, the truck’s grapples
tilted them down its far-side
ramps and onto the road.

“No use,” Morrison said,
breathing hard. “Water through
a sieve.”

“We’re licked,” Perine gasped
in wretched agreement, “like al-
ways. We humans lose every
time.”

The truck regarded them calm-
ly, its receptors blank and im-
passive. It was doing its job. The
planetwide network of automatic
factories was smoothly perform-
ing the task imposed on it five
years before, in the early days of
the Total Global Conflict.

“There it goes,” Morrison ob-
served dismally. The truck’s an-
tenna had come down; it shifted
into low gear and released its
parking brake.

“One last try,” O’Neill said.
He swept up one of the cartons
and ripped it open. From it he
dragged a ten-gallon milk tank
and unscrewed the lid. “Silly as
it seems.”

“This is absurd,” Perine pro-

A U TO F A C

tested. Reluctantly, he found a
cup among the littered debris and
dipped it into the milk. “A kid’s
game!”

The truck had paused to ob-
serve them.

“Do it,” O’Neill ordered sharp-
ly. “Exactly the way we prac-
ticed it.”

The three of them drank
quickly from the milk tank, vis-
ibly allowing the milk to spill
down their chins; there had to be
no mistaking what they were
doing.

As planned, O’Neill was the
first. His face twisting in revul-
sion, he hurled the cup away and
violently spat milk into the road.

“God’s sake!” he choked.

The other two did the same;
stamping and loudly cursing,
they kicked over the milk tank
and glared accusingly at the
truck.

“It’s no good !” Morrison
roared.

C URIOUS, the truck came
slowly back. Electronic syn-
apses clicked and whirred, re-
sponding to the situation; its an-
tenna shot up like a flagpole.

“I think this is it,” O’Neill said,
trembling. As the truck watched,
he dragged out a second milk
tank, unscrewed its lid and tasted
the contents. “The same!” he
shouted at the truck. “It’s just
as bad!”

From the truck popped a
metal cylinder. The cylinder
dropped at Morrison’s feet; he
quickly snatched it up and tore
it open.

STATE NATURE OF DEFECT

The instruction sheets listed
rows of possible defects, with neat
boxes by each; a punch-stick was
included to indicate the particu-
lar deficiency of the product.

“What’ll I check?” Morrison
asked. “Contaminated? Bacte-
rial? Sour? Rancid? Incorrectly
labeled? Broken? Crushed ?
Cracked? Bent? Soiled?”

Thinking rapidly, O’Neill said,
“Don’t check any of them. The
factory’s undoubtedly ready to
test and resample. It’ll' make its
own analysis and then ignore us.”
His face glowed as frantic inspir-
ation came. “Write in that blank
at the bottom. It’s an open space
for further data.”

“Write what?”

O’Neill said, “Write: the prod-
uct is thoroughly pizzled.”

“What’s that?” Perine de-
manded, baffled.

“Write it! . It’s a semantic
garble — the factory won’t be able
to understand it. Maybe we can
jam the works.”

With O’Neill’s pen, Morrison
carefully wrote that the milk was
pizzled. Shaking his head, he re-
sealed the cylinder and returned

GALAXY SCIENCE FICTION

it to the truck. The truck swept
up the milk tanks and slammed
its railing tidily into place. With
a shriek of tires, it hurtled off.
From its slot, a final cylinder
bounced; the truck hurriedly de-
parted, leaving the cylinder lying
in the dust.

O’Neill got it open and held
up the paper for the others to see.

A FACTORY REPRESEN-
TATIVE WILL BE SENT
OUT.

BE PREPARED TO SUP-
PLY COMPLETE DATA
ON PRODUCT DEFI-
CIENCY.

For a moment, the three men
were silent. Then Perine began to
giggle. “We did it. We contacted
it. We got across.”

“We sure did,” O’Neill agreed.
“It never heard of a product
being pizzled.”

Cut into the base of the moun-
tains lay the vast metallic cube
of the Kansas City factory. Its
surface was corroded, pitted with
radiation pox, cracked and scar-
red from the five years of war
that had swept over it. Most of
the factory was buried subsurface,
only its entrance stages visible.
The truck was a speck rumbling
at high speed toward the expanse
of black metal. Presently an
opening formed in the uniform
surface; the truck plunged into
it and disappeared inside. The
entrance snapped shut.

“Now the big job remains,”
O’Neill said. “Now we have to
persuade it to close down opera-
tions — to shut itself off.”

J UDITH O’NEILL served hot
black coffee to the people sit-
ting around the living room. Her
husband talked while the others
listened. O’Neill was as close to
being an authority on the auto-
fac system as could still be found.

In his own area, the Chicago
region, he had shorted out the
protective fence of the local fac-
tory long enough to get away
with the data tapes stored in its
posterior brain. The factory, of
course, had immediately recon-
structed a better type of fence.
But he had shown that the fac-
tories were not infallible.

“The Institute of Applied Cyb-
ernetics,” O’Neill explained, “had
complete control over the net-
work. Blame the war. Blame the
big noise along the lines of com-
munication that wiped out the
knowledge we need. In any case,
the Institute failed to transmit
its information to us, so we can’t
transmit our information to the
factories — the news that the war
is over and we’re ready to resume
control of industrial operations.”
“And meanwhile,” Morrison
added sourly, “the damn network
expands and consumes more of
our natural resources all the
time.”

AUTOFAC

“I get the feeling,” Judith said,
“that if I stamped hard enough,
I’d fall right down into a factory
tunnel. They must have mines
everywhere by now.”

“Isn’t there some limiting in-
junction?” Perine asked nervous-
ly. “Were they set up to expand
indefinitely?”

“Each factory is limited to its
own operational area,” O’Neill
said, “but the network itself is
unbounded. It can go on scooping
up our resources forever. The In-
stitute decided it gets top priori-
ty ; we mere people come second.”
“Will there be anything left
for us?” Morrison wanted to
know.

“Not unless we can stop the
network’s operations. It’s already
used up half a dozen basic min-
erals. Its search teams are out
all the time, from every factory,
looking everywhere for some last
scrap to drag home.”

“What would happen if tunnels
from two factories crossed each
other?”

O’Neill shrugged. “Normally,
that won’t happen. Each factory
has its own special section of our
planet, its own private cut of the
pie for its exclusive use.”

“But it could happen.”

“Well, they’re raw-material-
tropic ; as long as there’s anything
left, they’ll hunt it down.”
O’Neill pondered the idea with
growing interest. “It’s something

to consider. I suppose as things
get scarcer — ”

He stopped talking. A figure
had come into the room; it stood
silently by the door, surveying
them all.

TN the dull shadows, the figure

looked almost human. For a
brief moment, O’Neill thought it
was a settlement latecomer.
Then, as it moved forward, he
realized that it was only quasi-
human: a functional upright

biped chassis, with data-recep-
tors mounted at the top, effectors
and proprioceptors mounted in a
downward worm that ended in
floor-grippers. Its resemblance to
a human being was testimony to
nature’s efficiency; no sentimen-
tal imitation was intended.

The factory representative had
arrived.

It began without preamble.
“This is a data-collecting ma-
chine capable of communicating
on an oral basis. It contains both
broadcasting and receiving ap-
paratus and can integrate facts
relevant to its line of inquiry.”

The voice was pleasant, confi-
dent. Obviously it was a tape, re-
corded by some Institute tech-
nician before the war. Coming
from the quasi-human shape, it
sounded grotesque; O’Neill could
vividly imagine the dead young
man whose cheerful voice now
issued from the mechanical

GALAXY SCIENCE FICTION

mouth of this upright construc-
tion of steel and wiring.

“One word of caution,” the
pleasant voice continued. “It is
fruitless to consider this receptor
human and to engage it in dis-
cussions for which it is not equip-
ped. Although purposeful, it is
not capable of conceptual
thought; it can only reassemble
material already available to it.”
The optimistic voice clicked
out and a second voice came on.
It resembled the first, but now
there were no intonations or per-
sonal mannerisms. The machine
was utilizing the dead man’s pho-
netic speech-pattern for its own
communication.

“Analysis of the rejected prod-
uct,” it stated, “shows no foreign
elements or noticeable deteriora-
tion. The product meets the
continual testing-standards em-
ployed throughout the network.
Rejection is therefore on a basis
outside the test area; standards
not available to the network are
being employed.”

“That’s right,” O’Neill agreed.
Weighing his words with care, he
continued, “We found the milk
substandard. We want nothing to
do with it. We insist on more
careful output.”

The machine responded pres-
ently. “The semantic content of
the term pizzled is unfamiliar
to the network. It does not exist
in the taped vocabulary. Can you

AUTOFAC

present a factual analysis of the
milk in terms of specific elements
present or absent?”

“No,” O’Neill said warily; the
game he was playing was intri-
cate and dangerous. “Pizzled is
an over-all term. It can’t be re-
duced to chemical constituents.”
“What does pizzled signify?”
the machine asked. “Can you de-
fine it in terms of alternate se-
mantic symbols?”

O ’NEILL hesitated. The repre-
sentative had to be steered
from its special inquiry to more
general regions, to the ultimate
problem of closing down the net-
work. If he could pry it open at
any point, get the theoretical dis-
cussion started . . .

“Pizzled,” he stated, “means
the condition of a product that
is manufactured when no need
exists. It indicates the rejection
of objects on the grounds that
they are no longer wanted.”

The representative said, “Net-
work analysis shows a need of
high-grade pasteurized milk-sub-
stitute in this area. There is no
alternate source; the network
controls all the synthetic mam-
mary-type equipment in exis-
tence.” It added, “Original taped
instructions describe milk as an
essential to human diet.”

O’Neill was being outwitted;
the machine was returning the
discussion to the specific. “We’ve

decided,” he said desperately,
“that we don’t want any more
milk. We’d prefer to go without
it, at least until we can locate
cows.”

“That is contrary to the net-
work tapes,” the representative
objected. “There are no cows. All
milk is produced synthetically.”
“Then we’ll produce it synthet-'
ically ourselves,” Morrison broke
in impatiently. “Why can’t we
take over the machines? My
God, we’re not children! We can
run our own lives!”

The factory representative
moved toward the door. “Until
such time as your community
finds other sources of milk-sup-
ply, the network will continue to
supply you. Analytical and eval-
uating apparatus will remain in
this area, conducting the cus-
tomary random sampling.”
Perine shouted futilely, “How
can we find other sources? You
have the whole setup! You’re
running the whole show!” Fol-
lowing after it, he bellowed, “You
say we’re not ready to run things
— you claim we’re not capable.
How do you know? You don’t
give us a chance! We’ll never
have a chance!”

O’Neill was petrified. The ma-
chine was leaving; its one-track
mind had completely triumphed.

“Look,” he said hoarsely,
blocking its way. “We want you
to shut down, understand. We

want to take over your equip-
ment and run it ourselves. The
war’s over with. Damn it, you’re
not needed any more!”

HTHE factory representative
paused briefly at the door.
“The inoperative cycle,” it said,
“is not geared to begin until net-
work production merely dupli-
cates outside production. There
is at this time, according to our
continual sampling, no outside
production. Therefore network
production continues.”

Without warning, Morrison
swung the steel pipe in his hand.
It slashed against the machine’s
shoulder and burst through the
elaborate network of sensory ap-
paratus that made up its chest.
The tank of receptors shattered;
bits of glass, wiring and minute
parts showered everywhere.

“It’s a paradox!” Morrison
yelled. “A word game — a seman-
tic game they’re pulling on us.
The Cyberneticists have it rig-
ged.” He raised the pipe and
again brought it down savagely
on the unprotesting machine.
“They’ve got us hamstrung.
We’re completely helpless.”

The room was in uproar. “It’s
the only way,” Perine gasped as
he pushed past O’Neill. “We’ll
have to destroy them — it’s the
network or us.” Grabbing down
a lamp, he hurled it in the “face”
of the factory representative. The

GALAXY SCIENCE FICTION

lamp and the- intricate surface of
plastic burst; Perine waded in,
groping blindly for the machine.
Now all the people in the room
were closing furiously around the
upright cylinder, their impotent
resentment boiling over. The ma-
chine sank down and disappeared
as they dragged it to the floor.

Trembling, O’Neill turned
away. His wife caught hold of
his arm and led him to the side
of the room.

“The idiots,” he said dejected-
ly. “They can’t destroy it; they’ll
only teach it to build more de-
fenses. They’re making the whole
problem worse.”

Into the living room rolled a
network repair team. Expertly,
the mechanical units detached
themselves from the half-track
mother-bug and scurried toward
the mound of struggling humans.
They slid between people and
rapidly burrowed. A moment
later, the inert carcass of the fac-
tory representative was dragged
into the hopper of the mother-
bug. Parts were collected, torn
remnants gathered up and car-
ried off. The last plastic strut and
gear was located. Then the units
restationed themselves on the bug
and the team departed.

Through the open door came
a second factory representative,
an exact duplicate of the first.
And outside in the hall stood two
more upright machines. The set-

tlement had been combed at ran-
dom by a corps of representa-
tives. Like a horde of ants, the
mobile data-collecting machines
had filtered through the town
until, by chance, one of them had
come across O’Neill.

“Destruction of network mo-
bile data-gathering equipment is
detrimental to best human inter-
ests,” the factory representative
informed the roomful of people.
“Raw material intake is at a
dangerously low ebb; what basic
materials still exist should be
utilized in the manufacture of
consumer commodities.”

O’Neill and the machine stood
facing each other.

“Oh?” O’Neill said softly.
“That’s interesting. I wonder
what you’re lowest on — and what
you’d really be willing to fight
for.”

TTELICOPTER rotors whined
tinnily above O’Neill’s head;
he ignored them and peered
through the cabin window at the
ground not far below.

Slag and ruins stretched every-
where. Weeds poked their way
up, sickly stalks among which in-
sects scuttled. Here and there, rat
colonies were visible: matted

hovels constructed of bone and
rubble. Radiation had mutated
the rats, along with most insects
and animals. A little farther,
O’Neill identified a squadron of

AUTOFAC

birds pursuing a ground squirrel.
The squirrel dived into a care-
fully prepared crack in the sur-
face of slag and the birds turned,
thwarted.

“You think we’ll ever have it
rebuilt?” Morrison asked. “It
makes me sick to look at it.”

“In time,” O’Neill answered.
“Assuming, of course, that we get
industrial control back. And as-
suming that anything remains to
work with. At best, it’ll be slow.
We’ll have to inch out from the
settlements.”

To the right was a human col-
ony, tattered scarecrows, gaunt
and emaciated, living among the
ruins of what had once been a
town. A few acres of barren soil
had been cleared; drooping vege-
tables wilted in the sun, chickens
wandered listlessly here and
there, and a fly-bothered horse
lay panting in the shade of a
crude shed.

“Ruins-squatters,” O’Neill said
gloomily. “Too far from the net-
work — not tangent to any of the
factories.”

“It’s their own fault,” Morri-
son told him angrily. “They
could come into one of the settle-
ments.”

“That was their town. They’re
trying to do what we’re trying to
do — build up things again on
their own. But they’re starting
now, without tools or machines,
with their bare hands, nailing to-

G A

gether bits of rubble. And it won’t
work. We need machines. We
can’t repair ruins; we’ve got to
start industrial production.”

Ahead lay a series of broken
hills, chipped remains that had
once been a ridge. Beyond
stretched out the titanic ugly sore
of an H-bomb crater, half-filled
with stagnant water and slime, a
disease-ridden inland sea.

And beyond that — a glitter of
busy motion.

“There,” O’Neill said tensely.
He lowered the helicopter rapid-
ly. “Can you tell which factory
they’re from?”

“They all look alike to me,”
Morrison muttered, leaning over
to see. “We’ll have to wait and
follow them back, when they get
a load.”

"If they get a load,” O’Neill
corrected.

r TiHE autofac exploring crew
* ignored the helicopter buzzing
overhead and concentrated on its
job. Ahead of the main truck
scuttled two tractors; they made
their way up mounds of rubble,
probes burgeoning like quills,
shot down the far slope and dis-
appeared into a blanket of ash
that lay spread over the slag.
The two scouts burrowed until
only their antennae were visible.
They burst up to the surface and
scuttled on, their treads whirring
and clanking.

AUTOFAC

“What are they after?” Mor-
rison asked.

“God knows.” O’Neill leafed
intently through the papers on
his clip-board. “We’ll have to
analyze all our back-order slips.”

Below them, the autofac ex-
ploring crew disappeared behind.
The helicopter passed over a de-
serted stretch of sand and slag on
which nothing moved. A grove
of scrub-brush appeared and
then, far to the right, a series of
tiny moving dots.

A procession of automatic
ore carts was racing over the
bleak slag, a string of rapidly
moving metal trucks that fol-
lowed one another nose to tail.
O’Neill turned the helicopter
toward them and a few minutes
later it hovered above the mine
itself.

Masses of squat mining equip-
ment had made their way to the
operations. Shafts had been sunk;
empty carts waited in patient
rows. A steady stream of loaded
carts hurried toward the horizon,
dribbling ore after them. Activity
and the noise of machines hung
over the area, an abrupt center of
industry in the bleak wastes of
slag.

“Here comes that exploring
crew,” Morrison observed, peer-
ing back the way they had come.
“You think maybe they’ll tan-
gle?” He grinned. “No, I guess
it’s too much to hope for.”

“It is this time,” O’Neill an-
swered. “They’re looking for dif-
ferent substances, probably. And
they’re normally conditioned to
ignore each other.”

The first of the exploring bugs
reached the line of ore carts. It
veered slightly and continued its
search; the carts traveled in their
inexorable line as if nothing had
happened.

Disappointed, Morrison turned
away from the window and swore.
“No use. It’s like each doesn’t
exist for the other,”

Gradually the exploring crew
moved away from the line of
carts, past the mining operations
and over a ridge beyond. There
was no special hurry; they de-
parted without having reacted
to the ore-gathering syndrome.

“Maybe they’re from the same
factory,” Morrison said hope-
fully.

O’Neill pointed to the antennae
visible on the major mining
equipment. “Their vanes are turn-
ed at a different vector, so these
represent two factories. It’s go-
ing to be hard; we’ll have to get
it exactly right or there won’t be
any reaction.” He clicked on the
radio and got hold of the moni-
tor at the settlement. “Any results
on the consolidated back-order
sheets?”

The operator put him through
to the settlement governing of-
fices.

GALAXY SCIENCE FICTION

“They’re starting to come in,”
Perine told him. “As soon as we
get sufficient samplings, we’ll try
to determine which raw materials
which factories lack'. It’s going
to be risky, trying to extrapolate
from complex products. There
may be a number of basic ele-
ments common to the various
sub-lots.”

“What happens when we’ve
identified the missing element?”
Morrison asked O’Neill. “What
happens when we’ve got two tan-
gent factories short on the same
material?”

“Then,” O’Neill said grimly,
“we start collecting the material
ourselves — even if we have to
melt down every object in the
settlements.” •

III

TN the moth-ridden darkness
of night, a dim wind stirred,
chill and faint. Dense under-
brush rattled metallically. Here
and there a nocturnal rodent
prowled, its senses hyper-alert,
peering, planning, seeking food.

The area was wild. No human
settlements existed for miles; the
entire region had been seared flat,
cauterized by repeated H-bomb
blasts. Somewhere in the murky
darkness, a sluggish trickle of
water made its way among slag
and weeds, dripping thickly in-
to what had once been an elab-

AUTOFAC

orate labyrinth of sewer mains.
The pipes lay cracked and brok-
en, jutting up into the night
darkness, overgrown with creep-
ing vegetation. The wind raised
clouds of black ash that swirled
and danced among the weeds.
Once, an enormous mutant wren
stirred sleepily, pulled its crude
protective night coat of rags
around it and again dozed off.

TT'OR a time, there was no
movement. A streak of stars
showed in the sky overhead, glow-
ing starkly, remotely. Earl Perine
shivered, peered up and hud-
dled closer to the pulsing heat-
element placed on the ground
between the three men.

“Well?” Morrison challenged,
teeth chattering.

O’Neill didn’t answer. He fin-
ished his cigarette, crushed it
against a mound of decaying slag
and, getting out his lighter, lit
another. The mass of tungsten —
the bait — lay a hundred yards
directly ahead of them.

During the last few days, both
the Detroit and Pittsburgh fac-
tories had run short of tungsten.
And in at least one sector, their
apparatus overlapped. This slug-
gish heap represented precision
cutting tools, parts ripped from
electrical switches, high-quality
surgical equipment, sections of
permanent magnets, measuring
devices . . . tungsten from every

possible source, gathered fever-
ishly from all the settlements.

Dark mist lay spread over the
tungsten mound. Occasionally,
a night moth fluttered down, at-
tracted by the glow of reflected
starlight. The moth hung mo-
mentarily, beat its elongated
wings futilely against the inter-
woven tangle of metal and then
drifted off, into the shadows of
the thick-packed vines that rose
up from the stumps of sewer
pipes.

“Not a very damn pretty spot,”
Perine said wryly.

“Don’t kid yourself,” O’Neill
retorted. “This is the prettiest
spot on Earth. This is the spot
that marks the grave of the auto-
fac network. People are going to
come around here looking for it
someday. There’s going to be a
plaque here a mile high.”

“You’re trying to keep your
morale up,” Morrison snorted.
“You don’t believe they’re going
to slaughter themselves over a
heap of surgical tools and light-
bulb filaments. They’ve probably
got a machine down in the bot-
tom level that sucks tungsten
out of rock.”

“Maybe,” O’Neill said, slap-
ping at a mosquito. The insect
dodged cannily and then buzzed
over to annoy Perine. Perine
swung viciously at it and squatted
sullenly down against the damp
vegetation.

And there was what they had
come to see.

O ’NEILL realized with a start
that he had been looking at
it for several minutes without
recognizing it. The search-bug
lay absolutely still. It rested at
the crest of a small rise of slag,
its anterior end slightly raised,
receptors fully extended. It might
have been an abandoned hulk;
there was no activity of any kind,
no sign of life or consciousness.
The search-bug fitted perfectly
into the wasted, fire-drenched
landscape. A vague tub of metal
sheets and gears and flat treads,
it rested and waited. And
watched.

It was examining the heap of
tungsten. The bait had drawn
its first bite.

“Fish,’ ’ Perine said thickly.
“The line moved. I think the
sinker dropped.”

“What the hell are you mum-
bling about?” Morrison grunted.
And then he, too, saw the search-
bug. “Jesus,” he whispered. He
half-rose to his feet, massive body
arched forward. “Well, there’s
one of them. Now all we need is a
unit from the other factory. Which
do you suppose it is?”

O’Neill located the communi-
cation vane and traced its angle.
“Pittsburgh, so pray for Detroit
. . . pray like mad.”

Satisfied, the search-bug de-

GALAXY SCIENCE FICTION

tached itself and rolled forward.
Cautiously approaching the
mound, it began a series of in-
tricate maneuvers, rolling first
one way and then another. The
three watching men were mysti-
fied — until they glimpsed the first
probing stalks of other search-
bugs.

“Communication,” O’Neill said
softly. “Like bees.”

Now five Pittsburgh search-
bugs were approaching the
mound of tungsten products. Re-
ceptors waving excitedly, they
increased their pace, scurrying
in a sudden burst of discovery
up the side of the mound to the
top. A bug burrowed and rapid T
ly disappeared. The whole mound
shuddered; the bug was down
inside, exploring the extent of the
find.

Ten minutes later, the first
Pittsburgh ore carts appeared
and began industriously hurrying
off with their haul.

“Damn it!” O’Neill said, ago-
nized. “They’ll have it all before
Detroit shows up.”

“Can’t we do anything to slow
them down?” Perine demanded
helplessly. Leaping to his feet,
he grabbed up a rock and heaved
it at the nearest cart. The rock
bounced off and the cart con-
tinued its work, unperturbed.

O’Neill got to his feet and
prowled around, body rigid with
impotent fury. Where were they?

The autofacs were equal in all
respects and the spot was the
exact same linear distance from
each center. Theoretically, the
parties should have arrived si-
multaneously. Yet there was no
sign of Detroit — and the final
pieces of tungsten were being
loaded before his eyes.

But then something streaked
past him.

H E didn’t recognize it, for the
object moved too quickly.
It shot like a bullet among the
tangled vines, raced up the side of
the hill-crest, poised for an in-
stant to aim itself and hurtled
down the far side. It smashed
directly into the lead cart. Pro-
jectile and victim shattered in an
abrupt burst of sound.

Morrison leaped up. “What the
hell?”

“That’s it!” Perine screamed,
dancing around and waving his
skinny arms. “It’s Detroit!”

A second Detroit search-bug
appeared, hesitated as it took in
the situation, and then flung it-
self furiously at the retreating
Pittsburgh carts. Fragments of
tungsten scattered everywhere —
parts, wiring, broken plates, gears
and springs and bolts of the two
antagonists flew in all directions.
The remaining carts wheeled
screechingly ; one of them dump-
ed its load and rattled off at top
speed. A second followed, still

AUTOFAC

weighed down with tungsten. A
Detroit search-bug caught up
with it, spun directly in its path
and neatly overturned it. Bug
and cart rolled down a shallow
trench, into a stagnant pool of
water. Dripping and glistening,
the two of them struggled, half-
submerged.

“Well,” O’Neill said unsteadi-
ly, “we did it. We can start back
home.” His legs felt weak.
“Where’s our vehicle?”

As he gunned the truck motor,
something flashed a long way off,
something large and metallic,
moving over the dead slag and
ash. It was a dense clot of carts,
a solid expanse of heavy-duty
ore carriers racing to the scene.
Which factory were they from?

It didn’t matter, for out of the
thick tangle of black dripping
vines, a web of counter- extensions
was creeping to meet them. Both
factories were assembling their
mobile units. From all directions,
bugs slithered and crept, closing
in around the remaining heap of
tungsten. Neither factory was go-
ing to let needed raw material get
away; neither was going to give
up its find. Blindly, mechanical-
ly, in the grip of inflexible direc-
tives, the two opponents labored
to assemble superior forces.

“Come on,” Morrison said urg-
ently. “Let’s get out of here. All
hell is bursting loose.”

O’Neill hastily turned the truck

in the direction of the settlement.
They began rumbling through
the darkness on their way back.
Every now and then, a metallic
shape shot by them, going in the
opposite direction.

“Did you see the load in that
last cart?” Perine asked, worried.
“It wasn’t empty.”

TVTEITHER were the carts that
' followed it, a whole proces-
sion of bulging supply carriers
directed by an elaborate high-
level surveying unit.

“Guns,” Morrison said, eyes
wide with apprehension. “They’re
taking in weapons. But who’s go-
ing to use them?”

“They are,” O’Neill answered.
He indicated a movement to their
right. “Look over there. This is
something we hadn’t expected.”
They were seeing the first fac-
tory representative move into
action.

As the truck pulled into the
Kansas City settlement, Judith
hurried breathlessly toward them.
Fluttering in her hand was a strip
of metal-foil paper.

“What is it?” O’Neill demand-
ed, grabbing it from her.

“Just came.” His wife strug-
gled to catch her breath. “A mo-
bile car — raced up, dropped it
off — and left. Big excitement.
Golly, the factory’s — a blaze of
lights. You can see it for miles.”
O’Neill scanned the paper. It

GALAXY SCIENCE FICTION

was a factory certification for the
last group of settlement-placed
orders, a total tabulation of re-
quested and factory-analyzed
needs. Stamped across the list in
heavy black type were six fore-
boding words:

ALL SHIPMENTS SUSPENDED
UNTIL FURTHER NOTICE

Letting out his breath harshly,
O’Neill handed the paper over
to Perine. “No more consumer
goods,” he said ironically, a nerv-
ous grin twitching across his face.
“The network’s going on a war-
time footing.”

“Then we did it?” Morrison
asked haltingly.

“That’s right,” O’Neill said.
Now that the conflict had been
sparked, he felt a growing, frigid
terror. “Pittsburgh and Detroit
are in it to the finish. It’s too late
for us to change our minds, now
— they’re lining up allies.”

l^OOL morning sunlight lay
^ across the ruined plain of
black metallic ash. The ash
smoldered a dull, unhealthy red;
it was still warm.

“Watch your step,” O’Neill
cautioned. Grabbing hold of his
wife’s arm, he led her from the
rusty, sagging truck, up onto the
top of a pile of strewn concrete

blocks, the scattered remains of
a pillbox installation. Earl Perine
followed, making his way care-
fully, hesitantly.

Behind them, the dilapidated
settlement lay spread out, a dis-
orderly checkerboard of houses,
buildings and streets. Since the
autofac network had closed down
its supply and maintenance, the
human settlements had fallen
into semi-barbarism. The com-
modities that remained were
broken and only partly usable.
It had been over a year since
the last mobile factory truck had
appeared, loaded with food, tools,
clothing and repair parts. From
the flat expanse of dark concrete
and metal at the foot of the
mountains, nothing had emerged
in their direction.

Their wish had been granted —
they were cut off, detached from
the network.

On their own.

Around the settlement grew
ragged fields of wheat and tat-
tered stalks of sun-baked vege-
tables. Crude handmade tools
had been distributed, primitive
artifacts hammered out with
great labor by the various set-
tlements. The settlements were
linked only by horse-drawn cart
and by the slow stutter of the
telegraph key.

They had managed to keep
their organization, though. Goods
and services were exchanged on a

AUTOFAC

slow, steady basis. Basic com-
modities were produced and dis-
tributed. The clothing that
O’Neill and his wife and Earl
Perine wore was coarse and un-
bleached, but sturdy. And they
had managed to convert a few
of the trucks from gasoline to
wood.

“Here we are,” O’Neill said.
“We can see from here.”

“Is it worth it?” Judith asked,
exhausted. Bending down, she
plucked aimlessly at her shoe,
trying to dig a pebble from the
soft hide hole. “It’s a long way
to come, to see something we’ve
seen every day for thirteen
months.”

“True,” O’Neill admitted, his
hand briefly resting on his wife’s
slim shoulder. “But this may be
the last. And that’s what we
want to see.”

TN the gray sky above them, a
swift circling dot of opaque
black moved. High, remote, the
dot spun and darted, following
an intricate and wary course.
Gradually, its gyrations moved
it toward the mountains and the
bleak expanse of bomb-rubbled
structure sunk in their base.

“San Francisco,” O’Neill ex-
plained. “One of those long-range
hawk projectiles, all the way
from the West Coast.”

“And you think it’s the last?”
Perine asked.

“It’s the only one we’ve seen
this month.” O’Neill seated him-
self and began sprinkling dried
bits of tobacco into a trench of
brown paper. “And we used to
see hundreds.”

“Maybe they have something
better,” Judith suggested. She
found a smooth rock and tiredly
seated herself. “Could it be?”

Her husband smiled ironically.
“No. They don’t have anything
better.”

The three of them were tensely
silent. Above them, the circling
dot of black drew closer. There
was no sign of activity from the
flat surface of metal and con-
crete; the Kansas City factory
remained inert, totally unrespons-
ive. A few billows of warm ash
drifted across it and one end was
partly submerged in ruble. The
factory had taken numerous di-
rect hits. Across the plain, the
furrows of its sub-surface tunnels
lay exposed, clogged with debris
and the dark, water-seeking ten-
drils of tough vines.

“Those damn vines,” Perine
grumbled, picking at an old sore
on his unshaven chin. “They’re
taking over the world.”

Here and there around the fac-
tory, the demolished ruin of a
mobile extension rusted in the
morning dew. Carts, trucks,
search-bugs, factory representa-
tives, weapons carriers, guns,
supply trains, sub-surface projec-

GALAXY SCIENCE FICTION

tiles, indiscriminate parts of ma-
chinery mixed and fused together
in shapeless piles. Some had been
destroyed returning to the fac-
tory; others had been contacted
as they emerged, fully loaded,
heavy with equipment. The fac-
tory itself — what remained of it
— seemed to have settled more
deeply into the earth. Its upper
surface was barely visible, al-
most lost in drifting ash.

In four days, there had been
no known activity, no visible
movement of any sort.

“It’s dead,” Perine said. “You
can see it’s dead.”

O’Neill didn’t answer. Squat-
ting down, he made himself com-
fortable and prepared to wait.
In his own mind, he was sure
that some fragment of automa-
tion remained in the eroded fac-
tory. Time would tell. He ex-
amined his wristwatch; it was
eight-thirty. In the old days, the
factory would be starting its
daily routine. Processions of
trucks and varied mobile units
would be coming to the surface,
loaded with supplies, to begin
their expeditions to the human
settlement.

Off to the right, something stir-
red. He quickly turned his at-
tention to it.

A SINGLE battered ore-gath-
ering cart was creeping clum-
sily toward the factory. One last

damaged mobile unit trying to
complete its task. The cart was
virtually empty; a few meager
scraps of metal lay strewn in its
hold. A scavenger . . . the metal
was sections ripped from de-
stroyed equipment encountered
on the way. Feebly, like a blind
metallic insect, the cart ap-
proached the factory. Its progress
was incredibly jerky. Every now
and then, it halted, bucked and
quivered, and wandered aimless-
ly off the path.

“Control is bad,” Judith said,
with a touch of horror in her
voice. “The factory’s having
trouble guiding it back.”

Yes, he had seen that. Around
New York, the factory had lost
its high-frequency transmitter
completely. Its mobile units had
floundered in crazy gyrations,
racing in random circles, crash-
ing against rocks and trees, slid-
ing into gullies, overturning,
finally unwinding and becoming
reluctantly inanimate.

The ore cart reached the edge
of the ruined plain and halted
briefly. Above it, the dot of black
still circled the sky. For a time,
the cart remained frozen.

“The factory’s trying to de-
cide,” Perine said. “It needs the
material, but it’s afraid of that
hawk up there.”

The factory debated and noth-
ing stirred. Then the ore cart
again resumed its unsteady crawl.

AUTOFAC

It left the tangle of vines and
started out across the blasted
open plain. Painfully, with in-
finite caution, it headed toward
the slab of dark concrete and
metal at the base of the moun-
tains.

The hawk stopped circling.

“Get down!” O’Neill said
sharply. “They’ve got those rig-
ged with the new bombs.”

His wife and Perine crouched
down beside him and the three
of them peered warily at the
plain and the metal insect crawl-
ing laboriously across it. In the
sky, the hawk swept in a straight
line until it hung directly over
the cart. Then, without sound or
warning, it came down in a
straight dive.

Hands to her face, Judith

GALAXY SCIENCE FICTION

shrieked, “I can’t watch! It’s
awful! Like wild animals!”

“It’s not after the cart,”
O’Neill grated.

As the airborne projectile drop-
ped, the cart put on a burst of
desperate speed. It raced noisily
toward the factory, clanking and
rattling, trying in a last futile at-
tempt to reach safety. Forgetting
the menace above, the frantic-
ally eager factory opened up and
guided its mobile unit directly
inside. And the hawk had what
it wanted.

TJEMORE the barrier could
close, the hawk swooped
down in a long glide parallel with
the ground. As the cart disap-
peared into the depths of the fac-
tory, the hawk shot after it, a

swift shimmer of metal that hur-
tled past the clanking cart. Sud-
denly aware, the factory snapped
the barrier shut. Grotesquely, the
cart struggled; it was caught fast
in the half-closed entrance.

But whether it freed itself
didn’t matter. There was a dull,
rumbling stir. The ground
moved, billowed, then settled
back. A deep shock wave passed
beneath the three watching hu-
man beings. From the factory
rose a single column of black
smoke. The surface of concrete
split; like a dried pod, it shriveled
and broke, and dribbled shat-
tered bits of itself in a shower of
ruin. The smoke hung for a
while, drifting aimlessly away
with the morning wind.

The factory was a fused, gut-
ted wreck. It had been penetrated
and destroyed.

O’Neill got stiffly to his feet.
“That’s that. All over with.
We’ve got. what we set out after
— we’ve destroyed the autofac
network.” He glanced at Perine.
“Or was that what we were
after?”

They looked toward the settle-
ment that lay behind them. Little
remained of the orderly rows of
houses and streets of the pre-
vious year. Without the network,
the settlement had rapidly de-
cayed. The original prosperous
neatness had dissipated; the set-
tlement was shabby, ill-kept.

AUTOFAC

“Of course,” Perine said halt-
ingly. “Once we get into the fac-
tories and start setting up our
own assembly lines . .

“Is there anything left?” Ju-
dith inquired.

“There must be something left.
My God, there were levels going
down miles!”

“Some of those bombs they
developed toward the end were
awfully big,” Judith pointed out.
“Better than anything we had in
our war.”

“Remember that camp we
saw? The ruins-squatters?”

“I wasn’t along,” Perine said.

“They were like wild animals.
Eating roots and larvae. Sharp-
ening rocks, tanning hides. Sav-
agery. Bestiality.”

“But that’s what people like
that want,” Perine answered de-
fensively.

“Do they? Do we want this?”
O’Neill indicated the straggling
settlement. “Is this what we set
out looking for, that day we col-
lected the tungsten? Or that day
we told the factory truck its milk
was — ” He couldn’t remember
the word.

“Pizzled,” Judith supplied.

“Come on,” O’Neill said. “Let’s
get started. Let’s see what’s left
of that factory — left for us.”

T HEY approached the ruined
factory late in the afternoon.
Four trucks rumbled shakily up

to the rim of the gutted pit and
halted, motors steaming, tail-
pipes dripping. Wary and alert,
workmen scrambled down and
stepped gingerly across the hot
ash.

“Maybe it’s too soon,” one of
them objected.

O’Neill had no intention of
waiting. “Come on,” he ordered.
Grabbing up a flashlight, he step-
ped down into the crater.

The shattered hull of the Kan-
sas City factory lay directly
ahead. In its gutted mouth, the
ore cart still hung caught, but it
was no longer struggling. Beyond
the cart was an ominous pool of
gloom. O’Neill flashed his light
through the entrance; the tan-
gled, jagged remains of upright
supports were visible.

“We want to get down deep,”
he said to Morrison, who prowled
cautiously beside him. “If there’s
anything left, it’s at the bottom.”

Morrison grunted. “Those bor-
ing moles from Atlanta got most
of the deep layers.”

“Until the others got their
mines sunk.” O’Neill stepped
carefully through the sagging en-
trance, climbed a heap of debris
that had been tossed against the
slit from inside, and found him-
self within the factory — an ex-
panse of confused wreckage, with-
out pattern or meaning.

“Entropy,” Morrison breathed,
oppressed. “The thing it always

GALAXY SCIENCE FICTION

hated. The thing it was built to
fight. Random particles every-
where. No purpose to it.”

“Down underneath,” O’Neill
said stubbornly, “we may find
some sealed enclaves. I know
they got so they were dividing
up into autonomous sections, try-
ing to preserve repair units in-
tact, to reform the composite fac-
tory.”

“The moles got most of them,
too,” Morrison observed, but he
lumbered after O’Neill.

Behind them, the workmen
came slowly. A section of wreck-
age shifted ominously and a
shower of hot fragments cascaded
down.

“You men get back to the
trucks,” O’Neill said. “No sense
endangering any more of us than
we have to. If Morrison and I
don’t come back, forget us — don’t
risk sending a rescue party.” As
they left, he pointed out to Mor-
rison a descending ramp still par-
tially intact. “Let’s get below.”

OILENTLY, the two men pass-
^ ed one dead level after an-
other. Endless miles of dark ruin
stretched out, without sound or
activity. The vague shapes of
darkened machinery, unmoving
belts and conveyer equipment
were partially visible, and the
partially completed husks of war
projectiles, bent and twisted by
the final blast.

“We can salvage some of that,”
O’Neill said, but he didn’t actu-
ally believe it. The machinery
was fused, shapeless. Everything
in the factory had run together,
molten slag without form or use.
“Once we get it to the sur-
face . .

“We can’t,” Morrison contra-
dicted bitterly. “We don’t have
hoists or winches.” He kicked at a
heap of charred supplies that had
stopped along its broken belt
and spilled halfway across the
ramp.

“It seemed like a good idea at
the time,” O’Neill said as the two
of them continued past the va-
cant levels of inert machines.
“But now that I look back, I’m
not so sure.”

They had penetrated a long
way into the factory. The final
level lap spread out ahead of
them. O’Neill flashed the light
here and there, trying to locate
undestroyed sections, portions of
the assembly process still intact.

It was Morrison who felt it
first. He suddenly dropped to his
hands and knees; heavy body
pressed against the floor, he lay
listening, face hard, eyes wide.
“For God’s sake — ”

“What is it?” O’Neill cried.
Then he, too, felt it. Beneath
them, a faint, insistent vibration
hummed through the floor, a
steady hum of activity. They had
been wrong; the hawk had not

AUTO FAC

been totally successful. Below, in
a deeper level, the factory was
still alive. Closed, limited opera-
tions still went on.

“On its own,” O’Neill mut-
tered, searching for an extension
of the descent lift. “Autonomous
activity, set to continue after the
rest is gone. How do we get
down?”

The descent lift was broken off,
sealed by a thick section of metal.
The still-living layer beneath
their feet was completely cut off ;
there was no entrance.

TRACING back the way they
had come, O’Neill reached
the surface and hailed the first
truck. “Where the hell’s the
torch? Give it here!”

The precious blowtorch was
passed to him and he hurried
back, puffing, into the depths of
the ruined factory where Mor-
rison waited. Together, the two
of them began frantically cutting
through the warped metal floor-
ing, burning apart the sealed lay-
ers of protective mesh.

“it’s coming,” Morrison gasp-
ed, squinting in the glare of the
torch. The plate fell with a clang,
disappearing into the level be-
low. A blaze of white light burst
up around them and the two men
leaped back.

In the sealed chamber, furious
activity boomed and echoed, a
steady process of moving belts,

whirring machine-tools, fast-
moving mechanical supervisors.
At one end, a steady flow of raw
materials entered the line; at the
far end, the final product was
whipped off, inspected and cram-
med into a conveyer tube.

All this was visible for a split
second; then the intrusion was
discovered. Robot relays closed
as automatic reflexes came into
play. The blaze of lights flickered
and dimmed. The assembly line
froze to a halt, stopped in its fu-
rious activity.

The machines clicked off and
became silent.

At one end, a mobile unit de-
tached itself and sped up the wall
toward the hole O’Neill and Mor-
rison had cut. It slammed an
emergency seal in place and ex-
pertly welded it tight. The scene
below was gone. A moment later
the floor shivered as activity re-
sumed.

Morrison, white-faced and
shaking, turned to O’Neill.
“What are they doing? What are
they making?” .

“Not weapons,” O’Neill said.

“That stuff is being sent up — ”
Morrison gestured convulsively
— “to the surface.”

Shakily, O’Neill climbed to his
feet. “Can we locate the spot?”

“I— think so.”

“We better.” O’Neill swept up
the flashlight and started toward
the ascent ramp. “We’re going to

GALAXY SCIENCE FICTION

have to see what those pellets are
that they’re shooting up.”

T HE exit valve of the conveyor
tube was concealed in a tangle
of vines and ruins a quarter of a
mile beyond the factory. In a
slot of rock at the base of the
mountains, the valve poked up
like a nozzle. From ten yards
away, it was invisible; the two
men were almost on top of it
before they noticed it.

Every few moments, a pellet
burst from the valve and shot up
into the sky. The nozzle revolved
and altered its angle of deflection;
each pellet was launched in a
slightly varied trajectory.

“How far are they going?”
Morrison wondered.

“Probably varies. It’s distribu-
ting them at random.” O’Neill
advanced cautiously, but the
mechanism took no notice of him.
Plastered against the towering
wall of rock was a crumpled pel-
let; by accident, the nozzle had
released it directly at the moun-
tainside. O’Neill climbed up, got
it and jumped down.

The pellet was a smashed con-
tainer of machinery, tiny metallic
elements too minute to be ana-
lyzed without a microscope.
“Not a weapon,” O’Neill said.
The cylinder had split. At first
he couldn’t tell if it had been the
impact or deliberate internal
mechanisms at work. From the

rent, an ooze of metal bits was
sliding. Squatting down, O’Neill
examined them.

The bits were in motion. Mi-
croscopic machinery, smaller
than ants, smaller than pins,
working energetically, purpose-
fully — constructing something
that looked like a tiny rectangle
of steel.

“They’re building,” O’Neill
said, awed. He got up and prowl-
ed on. Off to the side, at the far
edge of the gully, he came across
a downed pellet far advanced on
its construction. Apparently it
had been released some time ago.

This one had made great
enough progress to be identified.
Minute as it was, the structure
was familiar. The machinery was
building a miniature replica of
the demolished factory.

“Well,” O’Neill said thought-
fully, “we’re back where we
started from. For better or worse
... I don’t know.”

“I guess they must be all over
Earth by now,” Morrison said,
“landing everywhere and going
to work.”

A thought struck O’Neill.
“Maybe some of them are geared
to escape velocity. That would be
neat — autofac networks through-
out the whole universe.”

Behind him, the nozzle con-
tinued to spurt out its torrent of
metal seeds.

—PHILIP K. DICK

AUTOFAC

CAUSE
OF DEATH

By MAX TADLOCK

Reaching the ultimate secret
was no problem . . . but could
I follow it up with an encore?

Illustrated by JOHNS

BOUT THIS thing, I
couldn’t stand to have
them laugh. Not the way
they did about the swimming.

“Oh, come now. No one could
learn to swim by reading a book.
Five-eighths of a mile the first
time in the water!”

And they laughed. I guess I
laughed, too. More than any
other thing, I’ve wanted people
to be happy. But I never swam
again — only that first time.

I’ve always read a lot and
sometimes things I’ve read do
get mixed up with things I’ve

GALAXY SCIENCE FICTION

done. But the things still hap-
pened — they happened to some-
one. And people ought to believe.

I’d like to tell people now. I’d
like to say, “I died once.”

But if they laughed, it might
be later and I’d never hear them.
Already there are too many si-
lent things in this. There must
be no silent laughter as well.

They might think I’ve got my-
self all mixed up with things I’ve
read. Things like surgeons pump-
ing life into a heart to bring the
patient back after he’s died on
the operating table. Doctors re-
viving dead soldiers, if they
haven’t been gone too long.

It’s not like that at all. I was
truly dead — for three days. It
was almost too long; I suppose
I made it back just in time. I
don’t know.

My reading was what started
me on this, just the same as with
the swimming. When I think
about it too much, I almost feel
myself that I am exaggerating a
bit.

But I have proof, proof which
no one has ever seen but the
doctors and those who found me.
See how they keep me swathed
in these cloths and how the dark-
ened room hides my eyes?

Anyway, I’d be ashamed to
show myself, for the mark of
death is too terrible and people
would be even more afraid of
dying than they are now.

'VT OU SEE, I could have done
-*■ it in the winter, only I was
worried about the cold. I might
not have been able to get back
at all. But it was too warm when
I chose to do it. I should have
known better. I’ve read a lot
about keeping things. You can’t
preserve them in the hot weather;
that’s why the doctors put those
dead soldiers in ice chests, but I
didn’t think about it enough. I
made some other mistakes, too,
but I couldn’t have known.

I guess what started it all was
something I read a long time ago,
perhaps in a story, or an agricul-
tural bulletin, or maybe in an en-
cyclopedia. Anyhow, it was some-
thing about pigs being able to
just die if they want to.

That always stuck in my mind.
It’s a pretty wonderful thing, you
know. Imagine just being able to
die if life didn’t seem worth liv-
ing, or if you were lonely, or
maybe just because you wanted
to.

Oh, I told lots of people about
it. You know how sometimes a
lull comes in a conversation.
Then I’d say, “Pigs are able to
just up and die if they want to.”

But nobody ever paid any at-
tention to me at all. They seemed
to ignore the remark. One man
did say once, “What the hell are
you talking about?” but even he
wouldn’t listen when I tried to
explain.

CAUSE OF DEATH

GALAXY SCIENCE FICTION

Perhaps it was just too im-
probable. Besides, people don’t
like to think about death. They
talk about it sometimes and
sometimes they brood about it,
but they never really think. It
has always been too unknown
and that frightens them. Then
they only fear and stop thinking.

It always did seem sad to me
that no one had ever tried to
help people out about death. Yes,
I know one did. He died and
came back — but then He wasn’t
just a man like you or me. And
even He never said exactly what
it was like.

I wondered if anyone really
ever had said. So I began to read
with only a single purpose in
mind. I had to know so I could
tell people. If they could only
know, then they wouldn't have
that fear and we could talk of
death and still be able to laugh.

But I had read it all when I
read of Jacob’s dream, for that’s
all there was — dreams, visions,
hopes. No one had ever seen and
come back to tell the others.

The question then was why,
not what. It couldn’t be that all
who died had no whole being to
return to. Not every death is
marked by a body completely
uninhabitable. I myself had heard
a doctor say, “There is nothing
organically wrong now. The pa-
tient will recover if only he has
the will to live.”

The will to live! Suddenly I
knew I had found the way. I my-
self would go and see and return
to tell them all.

T ANSWERED all the require-

ments. I had a healthy body
to return to. I had the will to
live, for I enjoy my reading and
acquaintances. And I alone had
thought it wonderful that pigs
can die when they merely want
to.

I knew that I could, too, and
I was not afraid. Very carefully,
I began what seemed almost too
simple preparations.

Drawing some money from an
account I kept for medical ex-
penses (at the time I thought
this very amusing), I bought an
electric clock which registered
the hour and the day of the
month on cylinders like those on
a tachometer. I felt I would want
to know exactly how long I had
been deceased when I came back.

Next I secured a small round
mirror with a concave face, the
type some use for shaving. This
I was to hang directly above my
face. It was merely vanity on my
part, for I wished to say that I as
well as Lazurus’s friends had
seen a dead man rise. I had as-
sumed that at first my vision
might be blurred and thus the
magnifying effect of this particu-
lar glass would, I thought, help
me focus on my face.

CAUSE OF DEATH

On my study floor, I prepared
a pallet. It was neither soft nor
hard, just a comfortable support
for the body I was to leave. Be-
side it I arranged a basin of
water and some soft cloths, for
I would want to wash right after
coming back.

You see, I did not fear the
obvious. My power lay in thought
and I proceeded systematically.

Drawn blinds and two small
night-lights spread a gray cast
over the room, a cast that I was
to know too well.

Everything was ready now. No,
wait! Quickly I placed a tumbler
and a decanter of brandy within
easy reach and by them laid a
pencil and a pad of paper. It was
when I straightened up that I
first felt the pounding in my body.
My heart pulsed as if it were
smashing waves of blood through
my veins. In my throat, the large
arteries swelled with pressure un-
til I thought I would strangle.

I had to have some physical
exertion to relieve the tension. I
felt I might faint or have a stroke
unless I moved about. My father
had been stricken with an em-
bolism at about my age, and I’ve
read such weaknesses are in-
herited.

So I walked about the house
rechecking the locks of windows
and doors. Perhaps it was just
to keep busy for a few more
moments that I even rechecked

too

the pads of cardboard with which
I had muffled the bell-clappers
on both telephone and door
chime. I don’t seem to have had
many callers for several years
now, but I had to avoid any
chance of being disturbed.

COME WHAT calmed by my
^ exertion, I prepared to lie
down, but a sentimental whim
moved me like an automaton to-
ward the window. It was the
only really unreasoning thing I
did.

Like a prisoner denied the
light on penalty of torture, I
knelt down and looked under the
blind. Never was the Sun so daz-
zling. This slightest lifting of the
shade poured onto me a warmth
that I had never known before.

An old saying, invading my
mind, destroyed the illusion, and
laughing a bit nervously at “seek-
ing his place in the Sun,” I turned
away and lay down.

The dials on my new calendar
clock registered 3:15, July 12.
Reaching for my pad and pencil,
I recorded this and then, refold-
ing my hands across my chest,
I lay quite still.

The heat of the day had begun
to saturate the closed room. Out-
side, all was quiet, as if the Sun
had mesmerized the world. The
insect hum of the electric clock
was the only clue of life around
me.

GALAXY SCIENCE FICTION

Looming large above me in
the mirror, the magnified reflec-
tion of my face calmed my mind
with its placidity. Great-lidded
Buddha eyes gazed down, hold-
ing in their glow my first under-
standing of Nirvana.

I knew that it had come. I had
reached the boundary where the
fear of returnless going stopped
the psyche just this side.

My only body consciousness
was the heavy thud . . . thud . . .
thud of blood being driven
through my veins. I toyed with
stopping the thudding, feeling
and savoring the pause between
those sledge-hammer strokes on
my brain — knowing that any
one of those pauses lengthened
to eternity was death.

Suddenly I shrieked and sat
upright. For an instant, my body
had completely stopped and I
had known it. Only a nameless
grasping fear had snatched me
back.

My heart beat wildly as I
gasped for air. With shaking
hands, I poured a drink and
gulped it down. It had been close.

Still trembling, I arose and
slumped into a chair. I had to
organize myself, to think my way
along this thing.

What had happened to me?

This one thing I knew: I could
do it. I could stop my body at
will and I had done it, if only for
a second.

This thought reassured me or
perhaps the brandy opened my
reserve of courage, for I had been
sitting in the chair some time.

VjjTITH caution, I approached
the pallet. I regarded it
with suspicion, as though there
were a deadly scorpion in its
folds. Then, jeering at my hesita-
tion, I lay down and composed
myself as before. The clock said
5:05. I stirred again only to
record this on the pad.

Despite my nervousness, things
proceeded faster this time. A mor-
bid excitement carried me along
the path I now already knew.
And at its end, I flirted with the
stopping. Going over and step-
ping back, going over and step-
ping back.

It was a pleasure exquisite and
unique. Once felt, it was unre-
sistable.

I was no longer afraid. I did
not have to be. I could stop my
body and start it at will. So I
let it slip away from me. The
thuddings ceased and only the
pauses remained — silent, shape-
less things in endless procession.
And then the great silence. It
flowed over me and I was lost.

The silence was too heavy and
my thoughts were not my own;
they floated up away from me
in the silence. I could feel them
go, but there was nothing to bring
them back. Each thought of pro-

CAUSE OF DEATH

101

test winged its way into a void
with all the rest.

And nothing else remained but
the will to live. As the silence
lapped around this will, it grew
until it alone was I. The silence
washed about it, but it stood.

Then the little rippings and the
slicings and the tearings and the
softening of things were there —
heard without sound, felt without
feeling, like the pulling of a tooth
from a novocaine-deadened jaw.

It was then I saw the face.

Have you ever felt the terror
of suddenly waking with a face
— a face of eyes — staring into
your unguarded and bewildered
first glance? One feels as if this
face would look into one’s very
life and wrest it from him. Per-
haps it is a nascent fear of one’s
own mask of death.

But I could not escape the
mask. It loomed above me with
gaping maw and staring eyes;
eyes that seemed more dead and
deadly as my vision cleared. The
mirror enlarged the horror that
lay below it.

It was the wrench of nausea
that pulled me from this night-
mare. In the violence of the
retching, I rolled from beneath
the mirror and raised myself to
hands and knees. I had knocked
over the clock and it shouted up
at me — 10:05, July 15. Three
days! Too long! Too horribly
long!

102

C LOWLY I dragged myself to
^ the telephone and pulled it
from the stand. I remember noth-
ing else until they brought me
here.

It’s been eight days — eight
days away from death, yet I’m
closer to it now than ever before.
And I can’t think of it. The fear
has come crashing through and I
can’t think.

This thing, this body is too far
gone. I won’t be able to make it
move. I’ll just feel it getting
away — little by little — ripping
apart cell by cell, and then every-
where all at once.

I can feel it now. But in that
great silence, I could almost hear
the tearing — yet there was no
sound.

The doctors have given up all
hope. I can see it in their faces.
I could hear them talking among
themselves when they brought
me in. They had to give it a name.
There’s a certain safety in a
name, you know.

I would have told them, but I
was afraid they’d laugh. The
nurses would laugh and say to
each other, “Have you heard
what the one in 408 wanted in
his case history?”

I couldn’t stand the laughter
now.

But that’s the way my chart
should read — Cause of Death:
— Death!

— MAX TADI.OCK
GALAXY SCIENCE FICTION

THE FITTEST by J. T. Mc-
Intosh. Doubleday & Co., $2.95

W HAT happens if Fido
and Felix finally real-
ize that they’ve been
bought off with a free meal by
mankind for the past few thou-
sand years? The author poses this
question by presenting a future
in which an experiment goes awry
and not one, but four animal
groups attain intelligence — mice,
rats, cats and dogs.

Having the capacity to reason,
these natural mutual enemies re-
alize that Man holds a greater
threat to their existence, being

the enemy of any competitive life-
form.

In this disturbing book, one is
uncomfortably reminded of the
slender pillars on which our ci-
vilization is erected: communica-
tion, transport and power. How
disruptive would gnawed tele-
phone wires, chewed power-line
insulation and glass scattered on
busy highways be if they were
constant and deliberate acts? As
the animal becomes able to com-
pete with Man almost on his own
level, Man must adopt animal
cunning and brutality in order
to survive. The way he does it
quick-freezes the blood! I would

★ SHELF

103

say that Mr. McIntosh has writ-
ten a Pippin — and that’s not
just apple-polishing!

POINT ULTIMATE by Jerry
Sohl. Rinehart & Company, Inc.,
$2.75

T I 'HE story concerns an Ameri-
ca of forty to fifty years
hence, thirty years after a suc-
cessful Communist conquest
achieved mainly by the use of
germ warfare. The enemy doctors
halt the epidemic with pre-pre-
pared vaccine, but it requires
monthly booster shots to main-
tain freedom from relapse, per-
mitting rigid control of the native
Americans. It is against this so-
ciety that Emmet Keyes rebels;
his weapon . . . immunity.

I was afraid at this point that
I was in for another man-against-
the-world thriller-diller, but Mr.
Sohl spared us that.

My objection to the book is
the caliber of opposition that the
hero encounters. I’ll go along with
us Americans being tough crit-
ters to hold down, but could de-
cadence hamstring the enemy in
only thirty years after conquest,
even with the super-effective
booster-shot gimmick that the
conquerors could hold over the
heads of the conquered?

I still had a pleasant time read-
ing it, though, and judging it as
literature would be unfair. Sohl

set out to write action and made
it

STAR BRIDGE by Jack Wil-
liamson and James E. Gunn.
Gnome Press, $3.00

A W, come on now — this is go-
ing too far! So help me, this
opus starts out with our rangy,
raw-boned hero actually astride
an old pinto!

Of course he doesn’t stay long
in the saddle. He’s light-years
away in pretty quick order, but
not before he gets involved in a
desperate chase, an assassination,
a temporary tie-up with the Di-
rector of Communications of the
company that owns the whole
Galaxy (incidentally a gorgeous
tomato), and a weird one-eyed
parrot and its owner, a fat little
Chinese who (why did you have
to do it, fellas?) spouts pidgin
English.

After this alarming introduc-
tion, which scared me into think-
ing that another Giles Habibula
was being born, Wu, the Chinese,
became a pretty interesting char-
acter.

None of the others come alive,
but, then, who’s got time to be a
character when there's so much
to do?

SOLAR LOTTERY by Phillip
K. Dick; THE BIG JUMP by
Leigh Brackett. Ace Books, 35c

104

GALAXY SCIENCE FICTION

HP HE Big Jump is a fine hunk
of story about Man’s first try
for the stars. One of the original
crew of five returns, comatose
but with body aquiver with a
horrid life of its own. A remark-
able feeling of horror and mys-
tery is maintained without let-
down while the hero attempts to
determine first-hand what has
happened to the original crew.

It’s a big-scale story, but it
still manages to make its people
human.

Solar Lottery is something else
again. It’s a longer story and has
ten times as much plot, so I
guess it should be ten times bet-
ter than its companion story,
but . . .

Anyhow, it concerns a society
that is founded on the monstrous
descendants of our present in-
dustrial giants; a governmental
setup that uses “teeps” — tele-
pathic agents; rule-by-chance suc-
cession that is determined by
lottery and lots, lots more. Too
much if you ask me. There’s a
limit to how many ideas a writer
can compress into a story. After
that, it’s profitless squandering.

TERROR IN THE MODERN
VEIN, edited by Donald A. Woll-
heim. Hanover House, $3.95

T HIS volume could be sub-
titled “Mr. Wollheim Gives
Up the Ghost.” Says he, “Ghosts

is dead.” Modern situations and
frustrations breed modern ter-
rors. Therefore this ghoulish goul-
ash of modern toupee-raisers.

Most of the stories are good,
particularly “The Crowd” by
Bradbury and a little shocker,
“The Rag Thing” by David Gri-
nell. The two long pieces, “The
Croquet Player” by H. G. Wells
and “The Burrow” by Franz Kaf-
ka are both interesting because
of the big names involved. “The
Burrow” particularly is a fine psy-
chological fable.

I liked even better the shorter
works by Heinlein, Leiber, Sheck-
ley, A. E. Coppard, Matheson and
Robert Bloch.

As for “He” by H. P. Lovecraft
. . . HA!

PHYSICAL & PSYCHICAL
RESEARCH by C. C. L. Greg-
ory and Anita Kohsen. The Ome-
ga Press, Surrey, England

HP HIS English study is not the
type of book one ordinarily
finds reviewed in these columns,
since it is meant for the profes-
sional rather than the lay reader.
But it is of interest because it
has something new to say con-
cerning “psi” powers and theory
that appealed to me, as utter an
utter layman can be, as a some-
what more productive and scien-
tific approach than the experi-
ments of the Rhine investigators.

* * ★ ★ ★ SHELF

105

However, it seems to me that
the problem of definitive con-
trol still remains unsolved in the
field of research. The authors
strive honestly to overcome this
basic fault of all ESP inquiry.
They don’t succeed, but their at-
tempt may help point the way
— if there is one.

SPACE CAT VISITS VENUS
by Ruthven Todd. Charles Scrib-
ner’s Sons, $2.00

TTERE’S something I’ve been
hoping for — a natural, age
group 9 to 12. It doesn’t at all
just so happen that I have a 9-
■ year-old son, Ricky, and a 12-
year-old daughter, Sandy, and I
was getting tired of having them
around at their present age levels
until something came along for
them to review.

Ricky: “I enjoyed Space Cat
Visits Venus very much. The

idea of a cat in a space story I
think is very unusual! You don’t
often read about a cat in space.
Venus itself was really some-
thing! On Venus there was only
one type of animal, a sort of
mouse. These mice were very
important to the plants of Venus.
Just like bees to our plants. Venus
was really mostly plants that
could communicate with each
other.”

Sandy: “I liked the book. It is
about Flyball, a space cat, and
Captain Fred Stone’s trip to Ven-
us. I liked the fact that the plants
were the intelligent beings on
Venus and not the animals. Now
when I do my gardening, I won-
der if perhaps my flowers are
talking about me and what they’re
saying. I hope they like me. I like
them.”

Well, that’s this month’s allow-
ance taken care of.

—FLOYD C. GALE

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106

GALAXY SCIENCE FICTION

Warrior's

Return

By ROBERT SHECKLEY

Hibbs wasn't the first man to come back
from the wars with a chip on his shoulder
. . . only his reached from here to Mars!

T HE SILVER and blue
cross-country bus reached
the outskirts of town and

slowed.

“Is there any special place you
want to get off, sir?” the bus
driver asked.

“This will do nicely,” Hibbs
said.

With great gentleness, the
driver braked his enormous vehi-
cle to an imperceptible stop, as
though he were transporting ni-
troglycerin instead of people. The
gesture wasn’t lost on the passen-
gers.

They recognized it as the
driver’s mark of respect, his

Illustrated by THOMAS

WARRIOR'S RETURN

T07

genuflection to the famous Mr.
Hibbs.

“Is he getting off here?”

“Shh! He’ll hear you!”

“But why here?”

“This is where he lived before
the war.”

“And why did he come by
bus?”

As the bus came to its imper-
ceptible stop four blocks from
the center of town, Hibbs stood
up and lifted his worn leather
suitcase from the baggage rack.
Every man in the bus noticed
how tall and stooped and skinny
he was, how homely, how tired-
looking. They’d be able to tell
their friends all about him. And
the women made notes of Hibbs’
unbecoming steel-rimmed glasses
and his cheap, unpressed suit, the
coat of which they could estimate
within a few dollars.

No one spoke as he gave his
ticket stub to the driver.

“It’s been a great pleasure hav-
ing you, Mr. Hibbs,” the driver
said, operating the door lever.
“Ah — Mr. Hibbs, could I ask
you a question, sir?”

Hibbs smiled vaguely, pretend-
ing he didn’t hear. He started
down the steps.

The driver said, “Would you
mind telling me why you came
by bus, sir, instead of the other
way?”

Hibbs shook his head and
walked down the steps.

108

“Mr. Hibbs,” the driver said,
“could I have your autograph?
My little boy — ”

Hibbs hurried away from the
bus.

“Freak!” the driver shouted.
The bus roared away.

Hibbs wiped perspiration from
his forehead and found that his
hands were shaking. He began to
walk toward town.

An old pickup truck came by.
Lettered on its battered side was
Tommy’s Auto Repairs. The
driver slowed, stared at Hibbs
and stamped on the gas pedal.
The truck picked up speed, its
ancient engine knocking furious-
ly. The driver glanced back once,
then hunched over the wheel.

Welcome home, Hibbs thought.

r T , HE PICKUP truck screeched
^ to a stop in front of Joe’s
Bar. Tommy Burke climbed out,
glanced up the block and hurried
into the bar.

“Hey, guess who’s in town!” he
yelled.

Joe’s Bar resembled a cavern.
The dirty windows were forever
shuttered and the light that fil-
tered through had a cold, unreal,
phosphorescent quality, as though
there were no light outside at all.
No matter what the time, it was
always midnight in Joe’s Bar,
midnight on the longest night in
the year.

The three drinkers had a night

GALAXY SCIENCE FICTION

look, too. Their leaning bodies
fitted cunningly against the bar,
as though shaped for that pur-
pose. Their feet were intricately
twined in the brass rail, in a
manner no human feet should
assume. They looked like fixtures,
like simulated humans that Joe
might have bought to keep him
company.

“Well, guess who’s back in
town,” Tommy Burke repeated.

The bartender put down his
newspaper and said, “Burke,
don’t come shouting in here like
that.”

“Give me a beer,” Burke said,
“and guess who’s in town.”

“Abraham Lincoln?” hazarded
Jim Mathis.

“Alexander the Great?” asked
Stan Dearborn.

“Julius Caesar?” said Eddie
Fleet.

“Here’s your beer,” Joe the
bartender said.

Burke took a deep gulp and
wiped his mouth. “Frank Hibbs
is back in town.”

“Huh?”

“You’re kidding!”

“Hibbs wouldn’t come back
here!”

“He’s here,” Burke said.

“Where?”

“Walking down Main Street.”

“Walking?” The three men un-
coiled their feet from the brass
rail, rushed to the door and
peered out. They came slowly

back to the bar and ordered.
“Another beer.”

“Make it two.”

“Better give me a shot. It is
Frank Hibbs!”

At that, Willie Day came out
of the men’s room. “You say
Frank’s back?”

“I drove right by him,” Burke
said.

“So why didn’t you stop and
give him a lift?” Day asked.

B URKE scratched his head. “I
didn’t think of it. You don’t
give Frank Hibbs a lift just like
that. What was I supposed to do,
stop and say, ‘Hop in, Frank,’
like he was just anybody? He
didn’t have to walk if he didn’t
want to.”

“You was scared,” the bar-
tender said, winking at the three
drinkers.

“I was not!”

“Sure you was — a big, strong
boy like you.”

“Well, I ain’t scared of you,”
Burke said sullenly, folding his
muscular, grease-stained arms
across his chest. “You big, flabby
meatball.”

“No offense,” the bartender
said, winking again at the drink-
ers. “So our home-town hero has
returned.”

“Think he’ll show us his
medals?” Mathis asked.

“Frank was never no showoff,”
Willie Day said, looking like a

WARRIOR'S RETURN

109

fighting rooster with his red-
rimmed eyes and bristling gray
hair.

“No, not much,” Mathis snort-
ed. “Him and his great big brain.”

“You can’t blame him for be-
ing smart,” Day argued.

“I reckon we’d of won the war
without him.”

“Don’t be too sure of that,”
Day said. “Just what you got
against him?”

“I hate freaks,” Mathis said.
“I’d like to boot his tail out of
town for him.”

“Why don’t you try?” asked
Day. “You’re about twice his size,
Jim. Go ahead and you try.”

“You can’t fight a guy like
that,” Mathis grumbled. “In a
fair fight, I could beat him. Arid
I can lick you any old time.”

“Say, Tommy,” the bartender
broke in, “what was Hibbs wear-
ing?”

“Business suit,” Burke said,
puzzled.

“Did he have on a hat?”

“I don’t think so. Why?”

“I kinda thought he might be
wearing a Buck Rogers space
helmet,” Joe answered.

Everyone except Willie Day
roared with laughter.

“I don’t like it,” Stan Dearborn
said. “Whenever Hibbs is here,
someone gets hurt. I think we
should ask him politely to leave
town. We could get up a deputa-
tion — ”

“You’re forgetting something,”
Eddie Fleet interrupted, with a
subtle smile.

“What’s that?”

“Frank Hibbs can make us
rich. You know that, don’t you?”
He waited until the drinkers had
nodded. Then he said, “Tommy,
go out and buy a New York
Times. I’ll show you what I
mean.”

TT IBBS COULD see that the
town hadn’t changed much.
Joe’s Bar was as dingy as ever,
with the blackout shutters still
drawn. Eddie Fleet’s hardware
store still had machine-gun marks
in one wall, from the time the
Russian plane, miles from its tar-
get, had strafed everything in
sight until a Matador brought it
down. Stan Dearborn’s shoe store
had a new sign and someone had
opened a dry-cleaning shop. But
Mrs. Ganz’s boarding house was
still there and Taylor’s cigar
store still had posters of the high
school football schedule.

He walked into the cigar store.
Mrs. Taylor was behind the
counter, reading a mystery maga-
zine. She blinked at him through
her bifocals and cried. “My good-
ness! Frank Hibbs!”

“Yes, ma’am,” Hibbs said.
“Could I have two packs of
Luckies?”

Mrs. Taylor just stared at him.
“Are you back for good, Frank?”

GALAXY SCIENCE FICTION

“Yes, ma’am. I guess I’m going
to stay.”

“Oh, Frank, we’ve been so
proud of you, most of us. We read
all about you in the newspapers.
Imagine a boy from our little
town becoming famous!”

“Well, it’s all over,” Hibbs said.
“I’d rather not talk about it.”

“I don’t blame you. It must
have been a frightful experience.
But I always said you were an
unusual boy. Do you remember
how I always spoke up for you
after your poor parents died?”
Hibbs smiled faintly. “Yes, of

course, Mrs. Taylor. How is
Danny?”

“Danny is dead. My poor boy
was killed in that big battle they
had around Port Arthur. He was
just an ordinary soldier.”

“I’m very sorry to hear it.”
“He was on an actual battle-
field,” Mrs. Taylor said, “carry-
ing an actual weapon. No gen-
erals tried to protect Danny.”
“Could I have the Luckies?”
Hibbs asked.

Mrs. Taylor took out two
packs and held them absent-
mindedly in her hand. “Well, I

WARRIOR'S RETURN

111

guess everyone did what they
could. I always spoke up for you,
Frank, you know that. I never
let anyone call you a freak in
my presence. Why, the main rea-
son they didn't commit you that
time was because of my say-so.
And you’ve certainly showed
them.”

“I’m very tired, Mrs. Taylor,”
Hibbs said. “I’d love to talk some
other time, but right now — ”
“Frank,” Mrs. Taylor cut in, “I
hate to ask you this on your first
day home, but — ”

Hibbs held out his hand for
the cigarettes. Reluctantly Mrs.
Taylor gave them to him and
accepted half a dollar.

“Please listen to me, Frank.
I’m only asking because you and
Danny were such friends and I
always stuck up for you. They
raised the taxes again on that
little tiny country place of mine
and it’s all Joe Walsh’s fault. If
you spoke to him, Frank — you
wouldn’t even have to threaten,
just one firm word out of you — ”
Hibbs hurried out of the store.
Mrs. Taylor followed a few steps.

“Well, perhaps after you’ve
rested,” she added urgently. “I
know you won’t forget your old
friends. Frank, why didn’t you
wear your uniform? Your news-
paper pictures were so handsome
with the uniform. Why didn’t you
wear it?”

“That uniform was a joke,”

Hibbs said bitterly. “I was no
soldier.”

He walked across the street to
Mrs. Ganz’s boarding house.

1W/TTHIN the dim and cavern-
ous recesses of Joe’s Bar,
the drinkers had gathered around
a two-day-old copy of the New
York Times, spread out full on
the bar. They had opened it to
the financial section.

“Do you really think he can
do it?” Dearborn asked.

“Of course he can,” Eddie Fleet
said.

“But will he?”

“Why not?” Fleet wanted to
know. “We’re his friends, aren’t
we? Look, we buy him a couple
drinks, we talk about high school
days, then we ask. him to have a
look at these stock market things.
He looks, right? Hibbs was al-
ways crazy about numbers. And
we’re his friends, right?”

“Fine friends,” Willie Day said.

“And then we ask him which
stocks are going up. It’s as simple
as that. All he has to do is say,
‘Minnesota Mining’ or ‘Dakota
Uranium.’ A couple of words!”

“All he has to do is point,” the
bartender said. “He don’t have
to speak at all if he don’t want
to.”

“He’ll never do it,” Day in-
sisted.

“Two minutes of his valuable
time, that’s all it’ll take,” Fleet

112

GALAXY SCIENCE FICTION

said. “How in hell can he say no?”
Jim Mathis shook his head.
“But are you really sure he’ll
know? Even those electric brain
things they got in Washington
and Harvard can’t do that.”
“They can, too,” Tommy Burke
argued.

“If they can,” Mathis asked,
“how come those professors ain’t
rich? Answer me that one!”

“Look,” the bartender said,
“Frank can outthink those ma-
chines. He did it during the war,
the early part, before they found
out what else he could do.”

“He won’t do it,” Willie Day
told them. “Look, a million people
must have asked him for favors
by now. Everybody knows what
he can do.”

“But this is his home town,”
Fleet said. “This is different. He
wants to live here. He wants us
to say what a wonderful job he
did. That’s what he wants. That’s
why he came back.”

Day shook his head emphati-
cally. “Frank came back because
he doesn’t have any other place
to go. I guess he’s about the most
famous man in the country now.
People won’t leave him alone. I
think he hoped he could find a
little peace and quiet here.”

“In that case, he didn’t think
very good with that great big
brain of his,” Mathis said.

“Come on,” Fleet said, folding
the T imes. “Let’s hunt him up.

It’s worth a try.”

Stan Dearborn said, “Hey, let’s
take along a fifth. Maybe we can
soften him up with a drink or
two.”

“Good idea.”

“A fifth of the best, Joe.”
“Who’s going to pay for it?”
the bartender demanded.

“We’ll chip in. We’re all in this,
aren’t we?”

“I guess so,” the bartender ad-
mitted. He slipped a bottle into
a brown paper bag. “Coming,
Willie?”

“No.”

“Why not?”

“Because you guys are crazy.
You go up to Frank like that,
there’s going to be trouble. Some-
one’s going to get hurt.”

“You’re just chicken, Willie,”
Burke said.

lyf ARIE GANZ had seen Hibbs
enter town and had just had
time to change into a freshly
pressed cotton dress, brush her
hair and touch up her lipstick.
She opened the front door of the
boarding house for him.

“Well, Frank!”

“Hello, Marie,” Hibbs said.
“How are you?”

“Fine,” Marie replied. “I guess
I’ve grown up a little since you
were here last.”

“Yes, you have. You were a
pretty little girl then . . .”

“And now?”

WARRIOR'S RETURN

113

“You’re a pretty woman.”
Hibbs coughed nervously. “Is
your mother here?”

“She’s in the hospital,” Marie
said. “Her stomach again.”

“I’m sorry to hear that.”

“But she kept your room all
through the war, just like you
asked. And I cleaned and dusted
it every day. It’s just the way
you left it.”

“That’s fine,” Hibbs said. “I
think I’ll go up now.”

But he hesitated. Marie was
half blocking the doorway. He
would have to brush past her to
enter the boarding house.

“The sheets are clean and
fresh,” Marie said. “And I made
sure nothing was ever moved.”
“Thank you,” Hibbs said.

“I know how you feel about
your personal things. I wouldn’t
of let anyone touch them.”

“Well, thanks.”

“You look tired, Frank. You
ought to have some fun, now that
you’re back. Go out dancing and
things.”

“Would you like to go dancing
with me?” Hibbs asked.

“Sure. I’d love to, Frank.”
“You wouldn’t feel — strange,
being seen out with me?”

“Of course not, silly!”

r I ^ HERE WAS an awkward si-
-*■ lence. Then Marie asked,
“What are you going to do now,
Frankie?”

“Nothing much,” Hibbs said.
“A little painting . .

“Painting? You?”

“Most definitely me.”

“But, Frank, you could make
millions!”

“I’m just going to do a little
painting.”

“I guess you can afford to,”
Marie said. “They must of paid
you well in the war. I’ll bet you
got more than those generals.
You should of, after all you did!”

Hibbs smiled vaguely, brushed
past her and slowly started up
the stairs.

Marie said, “Frank — ”

“Yes, Marie?”

“I hate to bother you at a time
like this. I hate to ask anything
of you — ”

“Later, perhaps,” Hibbs said
moving up the stairs. Hurriedly,
this time.

“Frank, it’s Mother’s stomach.
I don’t think the hospital is doing
her any good. And it costs so
much! It’s unbelievable how
much it costs.”

“The doctors know what
they’re doing,” Hibbs said.

“Wouldn’t you cure her,
Frank?”

Hibbs turned on the stairs. “I
can’t do anything like that.”

“I know you can,” Marie said.
“You cured Mother’s tumor that
time. I know she wasn’t supposed
to tell anyone, but I am her
daughter.”

114

GALAXY SCIENCE FICTION

“I’m through! I’m through with
all that. I’m just an ordinary hu-
man being now. I’m going to be
a painter — ”

“Oh, Frank,” Marie begged,
“you could just flick your fingers
and it’d be done.”

“Don’t you understand? I can’t
arbitrate. I can’t pick and choose.
If I give to one, I must give to
all. And I can’t give to all. I did
what everybody asked me once,
but now I’m sick of being differ-
ent. I’m my own man now and
I want to be like everyone else!”
“You won’t do it? A little thing
like that?”

“I can’t!”

“I shouldn’t think it would dis-
turb you so much.” Marie said.
“After what you did.”

Hibbs had turned pale. He
stared at Marie.

“Oh, you can kill, kill, kill, if
someone important asks you to.
But you won’t cure one little sick-
ness. Well, I wouldn’t be seen
out with a freak like you.” Marie
was shouting now.

Hibbs walked slowly down the
stairs, toward the front door.

Marie said, “I’m sorry, Frank.
I shouldn’t have said that. It just
slipped out.”

Hibbs opened the door.

“Will you come back? I don’t
renlly think you’re a freak,
Frankie — ”

Hibbs closed the door behind
him.

TIE SAT ON A bench in the
town’s little park. Two boys
came over and stared at him.

“Hey, you’re Hibbs, aren’t
you?”

“Sure, he’s the guy. Hey, Mr.
Hibbs, what did it feel like in
space?”

“Lonely,” Hibbs said.

“Was it hot or cold?”

“Neither.”

“How long did you stay?”

“Not long. It was exploratory.”
“How did you breathe?”

Hibbs didn’t answer.

“Bro -ther! What was it like on
Mars?”

“Lonely.”

“Boy! Hey, how about doing a
trick for us?”

“Yeah, show us some of your
stuff. Come one!”

Hibbs rubbed his eyes.

“C’mon, mister. Do something!”
The drinkers from Joe’s Bar
came up in a compact group,
blinking in the sunlight.

“You kids scram,” said Fleet.
“Go on, scram. Hiya, Frankie.”
“Hello, Eddie,” Hibbs said.
“You remember all the boys,
don’t you?”

“Sure,” Hibbs said. “Hello, Joe,
Jim, Stan — I don’t believe I
know this gentleman.”

“I’m Tommy Burke. I was a
couple years behind you in
school. But I remember you, Mr.
Hibbs.”

“Sure has been a long time

WARRIOR'S RETURN

115

since high school days,” Jim
Mathis said. “Buy! Remember
those days, Frank?”

“I remember them,” said Hibbs.

“We was all great pals then,”
Joe said.

Hibbs smiled.

“Oh, sure,” Dearborn said, “we
razzed you a little, Frank, be-
cause you were different. But we
really did like you.”

“That’s a fact,” Fleet added.
“No friends like the boyhood
friends, eh, Frankie?”

“I guess that’s true,” Hibbs
agreed.

“Things were always lively
when you were here, Frankie.
That time you burned down old
man Thompson’s shed. What did
you call it?”

“Poltergeist manifestation,” an-
swered Hibbs.

“Yeah! They almost put you
away, huh? But you showed ’em
all. All those profs at Harvard
and Duke — then the top Army
brass — you showed ’em!”

“I should have kept my mouth
shut,” Hibbs said. “I was an idiot.”

“How about a drink for old
times’ sake?” Joe asked, taking a
bottle out of a brown paper bag.

“Thanks, but I can’t drink,”
Hibbs said. “My metabolic make-
up ...”

“That’s okay, Frankie. We’ll
drink to you. Here’s to Frankie
Hibbs, the hometown boy who
made good.” Joe opened the bot-

tle and drank, and passed it
around.

jC'DDIE FLEET rustled his
newspaper.

“Say, Frankie,” Jim Mathis
said, “You were always a hotshot
with numbers, weren’t you?”

Hibbs didn’t answer.

“Well,” Mathis went on, “me
and the boys have been thinking
of taking a little flyer on Dakota
Uranium. Here it is here.” He
pushed the newspaper at Hibbs.
“What do you think, Frankie?”

“It’s a highly speculative
stock,” Hibbs said, not looking at
the newspaper. “I wouldn’t, if I
were you.”

“Yeah? Well, thanks a lot,
Frank. That saves us some money
right there. What stock do you
think we should buy?”

“I don’t know,” Hibbs said.

“Sure you do,” said Fleet. “We
read in the papers about how
you could predict any individual
stock, if you wanted to. You
worked it all out for fun once.
Just a matter of understanding
the stock market cycle, you told
the reporters.”

“I can’t tell you,” Hibbs said.
“You can see that, can’t you? If
I tell one person, I’d have to
tell — ”

“Don’t hand us that, Frankie,”
Mathis said.

“I won’t do it,” Hibbs said.
“When I was younger, I didn’t

116

GALAXY SCIENCE FICTION

mind doing things for people. I
got a kick out of it, enjoyed it.
I didn’t think it would turn out
this way. I liked being differ-
ent then, but it has to stop now.
I’m the only one of my kind and
there’s no place for me.”

“You mean you won’t help us
out?” Eddie Fleet asked.

“Can’t you see my position?”
Hibbs pleaded.

“You won’t help out your old
friends,” Dearborn said sadly.

“I can’t!”

They turned to go. Mathis
murmured softly, “Dirty freak.”

Hibbs stood up. “What did you
say?”

“Nothing,” Mathis said.

“Go on, say it.”

“All right then, I will,” Mathis
said. “You’re a freak, a dirty
freak. And you’re a murderer, too.
How many of them did you kill,
Frankie, sitting in your office in
Washington and thinking? A mil-
lion, two million? You aren’t
human!”

“You’re right,” Hibbs said, “I’m
not really human. I’m a sport, the
only one of my kind, absolutely
unique and unduplicatable. And
all of you envy me and hate me,
but you still have to ask favors
of me. Like a fool, I did what you
asked during the war, because I
thought you were my people. But
you’ll never leave me alone, will
you? You’ll never forgive me.”

“Don’t get excited, Frankie,”

Fleet said, taking a step back.

“I’m not excited. I’m hopelessly
tired and lost. Where can I go?
What can I do? It’s the same
everywhere. ‘Do this for me, Mr.
Hibbs, do that, Mr. Hibbs. Per-
form this tiny miracle for me,
Mr. Hibbs.’ And if I don’t — ‘You
dirty freak, Mr. Hibbs.’ You want
miracles? You really want to see
miracles?”

“Take it easy, Frankie,” the
bartender said.

“Sure, I’ll give you miracles!”
Hibbs told them. “Want to see
me fly?” Abruptly he levitated
himself fifty feet into the air and
came down again. “That’s how I
went into space. Want to see me
make fire?”

“Frank, please!”

T^IRE LEAPED from Hibbs’
fingertips, scorching the
ground in front of them. They
turned to run and suddenly found
themselves surrounded by a roar-
ing circle of flames.

“That’s how I make fire!”
Hibbs shouted. “What other little
exhibitions would you like? Tele-
portation?”

Mathis and Fleet were sud-
denly lifted off their feet and
hurled to the ground. They
scrambled up, ashen white, gasp-
ing, hands over their faces to
shield them from the circle of
flame.

“What else can I do for you?”

WARRIOR'S RETURN

117

cried Hibbs. “I’m practically un-
limited, you know, a real, genuine
superman. Maybe you’d like to
see how I control supersonics?
Shall I level this town for you,
as I leveled Stalingrad? Or may-
be you want to know what really
happened to the Russian Fourth
Army? I’ll show you!”

A blackness formed over the
heads of the men, expanded,
grew, began to envelop them.

“Frank!” Mathis yelled, run-
ning into the street. “For God’s
sake, Frank!”

The blackness disappeared.
The flames vanished.

“All right,” Hibbs said, and
levitated. “I’m going. To hell with
you and your lousy race.”

“Damn him!” grated Dearborn.
“He might have killed us!”

“I knew there’d be trouble,”
Mathis said. “He isn’t even hu-
man.”

“But where’s he going now?”
asked Tommy Burke.

“Mars, Venus, the Moon —
who cares?” Dearborn said.
“Wherever he goes, he’ll be alone.
Superman — he can have it!”
The figure of Frank Hibbs,
two hundred feet in the air, hesi-
tated, stopped, came down along-
side Willie Day. Hibbs looked
puzzled. Day was sitting on the
ground with his arms on his knees
and he had a sad, pitying expres-
sion.

“You didn’t run,” said Hibbs.

“No,” Willie Day said.

“You weren’t afraid I might
hurt you, even kill you?”

“Not really.”

“Why?” asked Hibbs, bewild-
ered. “Ive done more killing than
any one man in history. Why did
you think I’d stop at another?”
Day gave his head a single
shake. The pitying look never
left his face. “They were the
enemy. You knew what they
stood for and you were right in
hating them. You knew I didn’t
want anything like that, so you
wouldn’t kill or even hurt me.
And there’s something else . . .”
“What?” demanded Hibbs.
“You’re human. Maybe anoth-
er step up, but human all the
same. And you’ve been made to
think you’re a computer. I guess
you are in a lot of ways, but
there’s one thing you didn’t com-
pute.”

H IBBS SAT down beside him.
“What’s that?”

“You’re not the only one with
a special talent. There are plenty
of people like that — scientists,
artists, mechanics, gardeners with
green thumbs.”

“So?” Hibbs prompted.

“You think you can’t help any-
body if you can’t help everybody.
Does a surgeon figure that way?
Does a green-thumb gardener re-
fuse to work because he can’t
take care of everybody’s garden?”

118

GALAXY SCIENCE FICTION

Hibbs was silent for a long
while as the other men slowly
came back from the street. “I
hadn’t thought — ” he began, and
stopped. He turned sharply on
Willie Day. “Softsoap! You’re
after something! What is it?”
“Nothing,” said Day. “For my-
self, that is. For you.”

“You’re crazy. What could I
want that I can’t do?”

“Stop thinking of yourself as
a freak. You can’t do that alone.
You need help. All right, you’ve

got friends right here in town who
can help.”

Hibbs stared around at the
others. They nodded sheepishly.

“What about a — a drink?”
Tommy Burke invited.

“You know something?” said
Hibbs. “I’ve never had one with
the boys. I’d — well, I can’t think
of anything I’d like better.”

Day got up and brushed him-
self off. “Why not?” he asked.
“You’re only human.”

—ROBERT SHECKLEY

FORECAST

Next month, James H. Schmitz's serial THE TIES OF EARTH con-
cludes in a way that not enough stories manage to achieve — it leaves
you wishing it hadn't ended. But the problem has been tinglingly estab-
lished, the clues given and hunted down, the danger encountered in all
its ferocity, the tangled ties of Earth snaked through or cut — and where
can a story go from there except to its exciting conclusion? But one
still can't help wishing . . .

Oh, well, there's the consolation of Alan E. Nourse's BRIGHTSIDE
CROSSING, a novelet of a dreadful adventure that can't possibly suc-
ceed — and yet must be undertaken. History is full of such necessary
doomed exploits. The oddity is that so many of them escaped inevitable
catastrophe and did what they set out to do. But can this one? When
you read the frightening roster of perils and balance it against the few
things in favor of winning, we guarantee you won't rush to the $100
window to lay down a bet that the story ends happily. And don't
construe this to mean it does — or doesn't. Just wait and see, and then
think whether you'd have done the same as the men who had to go
along. Chances are that you would; some jobs have to be done, no
matter what the risk.

Another novelet to go with THE TIES OF EARTH and BRIGHTSIDE
CROSSING? It's almost for sure, only a matter of what can be squeezed
into the issue without elbowing out the lineup of short stories, Willy
Ley's FOR YOUR INFORMATION and our regular features.

WARRIOR'S RETURN

119

With Redfern

on Capella xu

Take Redfern's advice and do not get mixed

up with fearless people cast in the heroic
mold . . , they can really put on the squeeze!

BY CHARLES SATTERFIELD

I T WASN’T a pillory, exactly,
but it served a pillory’s pur-
pose. “For God’s sake!” Red-
fern yelled. “Careful with that
bear trap!”

His Fnit torturers didn’t speak
English, but they understood
what Redfern was communicat-
ing in a writhing scream. They
chattered at each other like

crickets on a summer night and
eventually took away the toothed,
spring-clamped, murderous-look-
ing trap and replaced it with
coils of wire, with which they
bound him to the frame. The
wire was tight, but not, Redfern
assured himself consolingly, as
tight as the trap would have been
on his legs and neck.

Illustrated by ASHMAN

120

GALAXY SCIENCE FICTION

WITH REDFERN ON CAPEllA XII

121

Next came the tar. At least it
looked like tar and served tar’s
purpose, though it smelled like a
swamp at low water. “Ouch!”
roared Redfern; it was hot. Then
the flaky pumice grit, for unfor-
tunately the Fnits had no feath-
ers — unfortunately for Redfern,
that is; the pumice had a way of
rubbing him raw that feathers
could never have matched.

Then the Fnits chattered at
each other for a moment thought-
fully and finally left him alone.

It was time for them to gather
faggots for the blaze.

"O EDFERN squinted over his
shoulder at Capella, slowly
drifting toward the horizon be-
hind him. He had about an hour
before sundown. It all depended
on whether or not they found
enough burnable wood before
dark. The insect-legged Fnits
were strictly daylight animals;
when their planet got cold at
night, they were tunneled in their
warm, damp cities underground.

Capella XII was not a very
fertile planet, at least not this far
north, and there might be much
suitable wood within easy carry-
ing distance, Redfern told him-
self. There weren’t any big trees
at all; he could see that for him-
self. And that was pretty hope-
ful. Why, it was ten minutes al-
ready and the fuel-gatherers
weren’t back yet, not even with

the first load. His chances of last-
ing past the sunset, he calculated
shrewdly, were at least five or
six to one, and that meant that
he would live until morning —
of course, if he didn’t freeze dur-
ing the night.

Fourteen hours! It seemed
like forever.

Someone coughed behind him.
“Pardon me,” said a voice — a
human voice! “Would you be in-
terested in a job?”

Redfern jerked against the
cables. “Who — who the devil
are you?” he demanded, craning
to see.

A man stepped apprehensively
out from behind the pillory. “My
name,” he said swiftly, staring
about, “is Di Candia. My, ah,
associates and I noticed that you
appeared to be in difficulties and
we thought that you might — ”

“Tell me later!” Redfern snap-
ped. “Get me down off here be-
fort the Fnits come back!”

“Surely,” said the man agree-
ably. “However, I should warn
you that the pay might be, well,
uncertain, since ours is a specu-
lative — ”

“Di Candia,” begged Redfern,
“cut me down!”

HP HEY SPENT the night in a
■*- cave on the mountainside,
where Redfern slept more joy-
ously than he had slept in years.
At daybreak, the man named Di

122

GALAXY SCIENCE FICTION

Candia nudged Redfern awake.
“We might as well get started,”
he said cheerfully. “It’s a long
way into the city — ”

“Not yet,” objected Redfern.
“The Fnits will be sniffing around
after me like dogs in a garbage
dump. Give them a chance to get
discouraged.”

“Oh, do you think that’s neces-
sary?” Di Candia blinked at him
thoughtfully. “Well, I suppose
you know best. After all — ” he
nudged Redfern jovially —
“you’re our expert on Fnits, and
if we can’t take your advice, what
are we paying for?”

Redfern nodded. “Exactly,” he
said. “What are you paying me
for?”

“Oh, it’s a simple task, Mr.
Redfern. My, ah, associates and
I have business here on Capella
XII. We need someone familiar
with the local customs.”

Redfern said sourly, “That’s
me, all right. If I were any more
familiar with the customs, I’d be
dead. Are these your associates?”
“All but one.” Di Candia
made the introductions. “General
Glick.” A red-faced man, ostensi-
ble age about fifty, though it was
hard to tell these days. “Mr. Cow-
per.” A pale-faced stripling. “And
Miss Garney, who is not present.
We represent a, well, syndicate
which is anxious to do business
on this planet.”

“You never will,” said Red-

fern positively. “The Fnits don’t
like humans. They won’t have
any business dealings.”

“We happen to think they will.
After all, they tolerated you for
nearly a year.”

Redfern sighed. “They toler-
ated me as long as I stuck to my
spaceship. But the first time I
wandered into town, they grab-
bed me.”

“Because you were in the
harem of the Glow,” Di Candia
supplied.

Redfern looked at him thought-
fully. “Been keeping an eye on
things, haven’t you? Well, yes, I
was. But how was I to know?
The Fnits ignored me; I walked
into a building; it turned out to
be the wrong building. Next
thing I knew, I was on the moun-
tainside.”

“But nevertheless,” General
Glick cut in ponderously, “you
were there, my boy. Were you
not?”

“I was.”

“And you can go there again?”

“I can. I won’t.”

The general looked helplessly
at Di Candia, who said smoothly:
“Not even for transportation off
Capella XII? Not even if the
alternative is going back to the
stocks?”

Redfern looked unbelievingly
at Di Candia. “What the devil
do you want with the Glow’s
harem? Take it from me, you

WITH REDFERN ON CAPELLA XII

123

wouldn’t be interested!”

“That,” said Di Candia, “is our
problem. You take us there; we
do the rest.”

S EVERAL HOURS later, the
party was toiling toward the
Fnit city. The general was in the
lead, puffingly reminiscing. “It
was on just such a morning as
this,” he said to the party at
large, “that I shot thirty and a
half couple of snipe before break-
fast on Glencouley. The wind
was from the southeast, perhaps
a touch east, and I looked like
being high gun until — ”

“Please, General,” said Di
Candia. “We’ll attract attention.”
They were only fifty yards from
the Fnit highway, across a rise;
they could hear the clatter of
unicycles streaming along it.

“Time for a break,” said Cow-
per — almost his first words
since Redfern had joined the
party. Without discussion, Di
Candia and the general stopped
in their tracks and sat down.

Redfern leaned against a
boulder and lit a cigarette, swel-
tering. Capella itself was a billion
miles away, farther than Saturn
from Sol, but it was hot under
the fur hoods. All of them were
thirty or forty pounds heavier
because Capella XII’s gravity was
twenty per cent or so higher
than Earth’s; walking was hard
work.

Redfern debated casting off
the furry parka, but it was im-
portant to keep his face shielded
as much as possible in case a
Fnit should notice them and
recognize the late prisoner of the
pillory. Of course, with not more
than a couple of dozen humans
on the whole planet, it wouldn’t
be much of a feat to track him
down, but the Fnits were strange
— they didn’t show much disposi-
tion toward method. They would
be as likely as not to ignore the
humans, unless they happened to
see Redfern himself.

General Glick sighed heavily.
“Lunch looks like being late,” he
mentioned, scowling with the ef-
fort of thought. “Could do with
a bit of it, too.”

“We’ll eat when we get back to
the ship,” said Di Candia harshly.
The general looked bleak and
frustrated.

Redfern shut his mouth like a
prudent man. His new employers
were an odd lot, but, as they had
pointed out, he was in no posi-
tion to be choosy. He sighed and
flipped his cigarette away. The
Fnit planet had seemed like such
a good idea, back on Earth. New-
ly discovered, virgin territory for
commercial exploitation, it had
looked like the perfect way to
recoup fortunes for a man with a
spaceship and no ties.

No doubt the, ah, syndicate
had felt much the same; but Red-

124

GALAXY SCIENCE FICTION

fern could predict no glowing fu-
ture for them. His own experience
was distinctly negative. First the
months and months of trying to
get the Fnits to pay attention to
him; then the unfortunate inci-
dent when they did.

Of course, he was a loner and
these people numbered at least
four. Perhaps they were better
equipped; certainly they ap-
peared to be better financed.

nPHEIR SHIP proved that,
when they got to it. It was
a monster, for a private vessel,
thrice the size of Redfern’s an-
cient blowtorch. It had the look
of a Navy rocket, outmoded and
sold to civilians with political
pull. But even with pull, the
Navy’s castoffs don’t come cheap,
and the fuel bill for any rocket
capable of carting tons of payload
around space is a big item in any-
body’s budget book.

Redfern’s practiced eye took
in the ship’s fittings — Golightly
converter for faster-than-light
flight, self-contained atmosphere
regenerator, even that unqualified
luxury, a radio communications
set, utterly useless except when
within orbiting range of an in-
habited planet because of the
torpor of radio-wave speed. In
the ledger of his mind, the total
was astonishing.

The fifth member of the party,
the Miss Garney, joined them at

the ship. She was, by Redfern’s
estimate, the most utterly gor-
geous piece of femininity a gra-
cious Maker ever put on a planet.
She came into the ship’s lock like
Aphrodite emerging from the
waves, and Redfern’s adrenals
buckled down to heavy-duty
pumping.

She said meekly, “Things are
coming along. My Fnit con-
tact — ”

“Miss Garney!” thundered Di
Candia. He looked meaningfully
at Redfern and said, “Step into
the pilot-chamber with me and
report. I don’t want to have to
caution you about security again.”

Redfern stared after them. It
was a moment before he noticed
that his fists were clenched and
his whole body in a position of
combat.

He looked dazedly at young
Cowper and the general. Cowper
was playing an intricate form of
six-deck solitaire and the general
was relaxed in a plush armchair,
holding a brandy-and-splash, ob-
viously dreaming of keepered
moors and screamers against a
rainy wind. Were they men or
mice, Redfern demanded furious-
ly of himself, that they could
stand silent while a crude, rude
oaf like Di Candia browbeat so
lovely a thing as Miss Garney?

And what was she doing along
on a job like this, anyway? Back
on Earth was where she belonged,

WITH REDFERN ON CAPELLA XII

125

with Titans of industry and the
crowned heads of South America
fighting to drink champagne from
her slipper; back on the TV
screens of the world, or the front
pages of the newspapers. Not in
an out-of-the-way planet of a
God-forsaken star, where the en-
tire human population could
nearly be counted on the fingers
and toes and the non-human
population had no eye for mam-
malian beauty.

Put a name to it: Redfern was,
just like that, in love.

1TE FELT like a fool in the
false Santa Claus beard, but
Miss Garney had insisted on it.

“According to my Fnit con-
tact,” she said in a voice like the
chiming of mellow gongs, “they
think of you as Warm Blood with
Freckles. They’ll never think of
spotting you under a false beard,
particularly if we dye your hair.”

Redfern was less positive, but
if Miss. Garney wanted it that
way, that was the way it would
be. Besides, it meant just the two
of them going into the Fnit city
alone — except, of course, for
the Fnits, which hardly counted
as competition.

They took the long serpentine
tunnel down into the Fnit city,
lit with pale greenish fire from
the rock ceiling, and walked un-
noticed through the scurrying
Fnits.

126

If you’ve seen one Fnit, you’ve
seen them all: insect-legged, hu-
man-sized, heads like moldy
skulls. They could learn to speak
English, in a way — a few of
them had, when the first explor-
ing spacer roared down. But few
of them bothered, and no human
had ever learned to speak Fnit.
The Fnits didn’t bother about
their human and other extrastel-
lar visitors at all, as a matter of
fact. Live and let live was their
motto — until one of their un-
invited guests crossed the sharp
and invisible line of taboo. Then
they crossed out the “let live”
part of the motto and began
gathering faggots.

Redfern, remembering, loos-
ened his collar. “Let’s get this
over with,” he whispered to Miss
Garney.

“They don’t understand you,”
she said conversationally, with a
mellow, sympathetic smile. “Don’t
worry. Where did you say the
harem was?”

Redfern said rebelliously:
“That’s your word, not mine. All
I know is that it belongs to the
chief, what they call the Glow
of All the Fnits, and they grabbed
me when I walked in.”

“It’s the harem,” Miss Garney
said sunnily. “Trust my — con-
tact for that.”

“How did you make a con-
tact?” Redfern demanded. “Heav-
en knows, I tried for a year and

GALAXY SCIENCE FICTION

they wouldn’t give me a tumble.”

“Oh, that was Sir Vivian’s
work.”

“Sir Vivian?”

“Major-General Sir Vivian
Mowgli-Glick. You wouldn’t
think it to look at him, but he’s
quite an expert at making con-
tact with, well, native races.
Learned it in India.”

TJEDFERN stared at her. He
had been in India; in Cawn-
pore, where the steel mills
belched smoke and fire day and
night; in Madras, where the big
TV studios provided entertain-
ment for the whole world; on the
Bengali coast, where the casinos
attracted the idle rich of the
whole Solar System.

“In India?” he asked.

“Some time ago,” she ex-
plained. “The general is older
than he appears.”

“He’d have to be.” That was
one of the troubles with life these
days, Redfern grumbled to him-
self. Six months in the rejuvenat-
ing clinic and an octogenarian
came out as young-looking as he
liked.

Naturally, the biochemists
were careful to call it a “cosmetic
change,” for they didn’t really
make a man younger. They only
restored the elasticity of the skin
with hormone injections, shored
up the crumbling bone structure
with chelate ion-exchange, then

patched up worn organs and
spruced up useful ones, drained
the accumulated poisons from the
brain and nervous system, gen-
erally tightened up the loose neu-
ronic connections and refurbished
ancient joints. Of course, age left
its marks. A man of 200 could
never be the man he’d been at
150, but — “cosmetic change!”

It was like jacking up the-
rotor-cap on a senile Model-J
copter and rolling a 2088 Super-
Jetmaster underneath it.

Figure it out: It was late Nine-
teenth Century or so when any-
one could call the Indians a “na-
tive race,” which meant that the
general must have been nearly
a hundred when the rejuvenation
clinics opened up. Which would
make him —

“Older than hell,” growled Red-
fern. He himself was a good
fifty years from his first rejuvena-
tion, which accounted for some
of his prejudices. Like most
juniors, he rather resented the
clinics. Without them, the world
wouldn’t be bulging as precari-
ously at is was, the drive into
interstellar space wouldn’t be as
urgent . . . and people like Red-
fern wouldn’t find themselves pil-
loried by black-shelled monsters
like the Fnits.

Miss Garney was explaining:
“ — brought along a stock of
beads and baubles and so on.
Trade goods, you know. But Sir

WITH REDFERN ON CAPELLA XII

127

Vivian found out something that’s
been very useful, Mr. Redfern.
Sugar. The Fnits are fond of it.
Oh, not to eat, of course — I
suppose it would poison them or
turn them green or something.
But they make a sticky syrup
and cement the cracks in their
shells. They never get wet, so — ”
“There it is,” hissed Redfern,
jerking his chin at a sphincter-
shaped doorway. “That’s where
they grabbed me. The harem.”
“Oh!” she squealed. “Lovely.
It’s just lovely, Mr. Redfern!”

To Redfern, it looked like any
other Fnit dwelling, only bigger.
The honeycombed rock passages
of the Fnit city were not con-
structed for sweeping views. One
entrance looked much like any
other entrance, apart from minor
differences in design. The essen-
tial difference in design between
this and any other was the loung-
ing pair of Fnits at the entrance;
to Redfern, the last time he had
come this way, it had seemed
they might be doormen to a
public building. It had taken only
a few seconds to find out they
were guards.

1%/fISS GARNEY was making
careful notes in a little book.
“ — three, four, five, sixth en-
trance down from that public
drink fountain or whatever it is,”
she counted. “Sort of hexagonal
sign over the entrance. Good.”

She closed the notebook and
smiled meltingly at her escort.
“The general won’t have much
trouble locating it. Now we’ve got
a couple of hours to kill. Would
you like to look around the
town?”

Something was bothering Red-
fern. “Why would the general
want to locate it?” he asked un-
easily.

“Oh, I don’t know.” Miss
Garney looked charmingly vague.
“Something about trade relations
— he really doesn’t tell me much.
Oh, Mr. Redfern, what a charm-
ing sight! Let’s go look at it!”

The “charming view” was the
Fnit equivalent of a kiddies’
swimming pool, a sort of dusty
sandbox, where soft-shelled little
Fnits, just past the larval stage,
rolled around and threw dust in
the air and chattered to each
other. But Redfern wasn’t bored;
he had a charming sight of his
own to look at.

While Miss Garney was tour-
ing the Fnit city, Redfern was
admiring the lovely way her head
sat on her neck, and the remark-
able grace with which her supple
fingers scratched the end of her
thin, lovely nose. He thought
dazedly of his library of pinups,
the telestars and S-girls, back in
the ship; but they blurred and
grayed in his memory in com-
parison with Miss Garney. He
didn’t even know her first name!

128

GALAXY SCIENCE FICTION

But his adrenals whispered it to
his central nervous system and
his pounding heart agreed it was
true: “She’s beautiful!”

By the time they got back to
the ship, Redfern was hinting
broadly about cottages and wed-
ding rings. But he stopped short
as they approached the ship.

“Good Lord,” he said, turning
white. “They’ve found out where
I am!”

The base of the ship was ringed
with Fnits, a dozen of them, clut-
tering violently at each other.

Miss Garney patted his arm.
“Don’t worry,” she soothed. “It’s
time for their handout. The gen-
eral usually takes care of it. It
gives him pleasure.”

A ND THAT was what it was,
because as they drew near,
the baselock opened and General
Sir Vivian Mowgli-Glick stood
beaming in the hatch, a carton in
one hand. “Here, sir!” he com-
manded, and tossed little white
envelopes of sugar at the Fnits.
“Yours, sir. No, no, you with the
red collar — you’ve had your
share, I say!”

Redfern and the girl pushed
their way through the Fnits into
the ship. The general, with one
last scattering toss of sugar, fol-
lowed.

“Dirty little beggars,” he said
with satisfaction. “Reminds me
of the Dogras in Srinagar. It was

the Fifty-third Rifles at the time
and we’d just come up from the
Vale. Bless me, I was only — ”
“Shut up,” said Cowper from
behind his everlasting solitaire.
“Did you find the place, Miss
Garney?”

The girl nodded. “Mr. Redfern
was most helpful.” She smiled at
Redfern.

“All right,” said Cowper, and
slammed the cards down on the
table. “Let’s go. Glick, Di Candia
— you come with me. Garney,
entertain our associate here. We
won’t be long.”

And they left. Redfern looked
warily at the girl.

“Well,” she said brightly,
“would you like a cup of tea?”
Redfern cleared his throat.
“Uh, how long will they, well, be
gone?” he asked. “I mean — ”
She laughed. “I know what you
mean. Have some tea.” She
opened the galley and expertly
drew hot water into a pot. “The
general’s idea,” she said over her
shoulder. “He cannot abide in-
stant tea; he insists on tea leaves
and a pot. It makes quite a spec-
tacle in free-fall.”

It was at least half an hour,
Redfern was thinking, to the Fnit
city, and half an hour back. So,
assume they would take at least
half an hour in the city to do
whatever they were going to do,
that meant ninety minutes. He
glanced at the girl thoughtfully,

x 1 1

WITH REDFERN ON CAPELLA

129

estimating her powers of resist-
ance. Of course, that was always
assuming they were really going
to the Fnit city; but it had to be
that —

Miss Garney said: “You rocket
jockeys, you’re all alike.” She
picked up the pot of scalding
water meaningfully and marched
to the table. “Tea,” she said in a
voice of command, shoving Cow-
per’s solitaire cards out of the
way.

Redfern scratched his ear and
sat at the table. It wasn’t the
first time he had made a faulty
first approach to a landing and
had to abort and come in again.

The girl peeked under the lid
of the teapot, nodded, and poured.
“Now,” she said firmly, “we’ll
have a pleasant chat, won’t we?
How did you happen to be on
Capella Twelve, Mr. Redfern?”

H E SLID HIS chair around
closer to her. “Well, it’s like
anything else. Dad ran a fleet of
charter ships — all rockets, you
know, just local stuff. Then the
Golightly drive came along and
nobody wanted a ship that
couldn’t make it past Saturn. Dad
went to the bank and got the
money to refit the ships, but the
bank was smarter than he was
and they wound up with the
ships, all but one. So we heard
about the big opportunities out
around here and I came out to

130

look for them. I’m still looking.
Did anyone tell you that your
eyes are the exact color of

“That’s very interesting,” she
said, moving away. “And your
family is still on Earth?”

“Oh, I never had any family,”
said Redfern, absent-mindedly
moving closer to the sugar, which
was in front of Miss Garney.
“Just Dad, I mean. No wife or
anything like that. But I’ve al-
ways looked forward to settling
down and — ”

“You’ll make me spill my tea,”
said Miss Garney. “Now why
don’t you just have a piece of
cake? We’ve got plenty of time
for a nice — I mean I don’t know
exactly when they will be back,
it might be any minute, but why
don’t we just chat?”

She patted her hair back into
place, looking hunted. “It’s been
a most interesting trip,” she said
vivaciously. “Really, I had no
idea space was so interesting.
When Sir Vivian approached me,
I mean, I had the idea that it
would be just a long, dull thing,
but actually it’s been terribly in-
teresting.”

She made a grab for her bag.
“Cigarette?” she asked in a bright
tone, lighting one and holding it
like a gun between her and Red-
fern.

Redfern sighed. “Thanks,” he
said, lighting one for himself.
After all, a cigarette only burned

GALAXY SCIENCE FICTION

WITH REDFERN ON

CAPELLA XII

131

for, he calculated, maybe nine
minutes. He sat back and re-
marked conversationally: “So

this was Sir Vivian’s ide'a, coming
here?”

“Oh, yes — his and Mr. Cow-
per’s and Major Di Candia’s. So
we formed a syndicate. They had
the know-how and the actual ex-
perience. Major Di Candia was
in business on Iapetus for ever
so long. And, well, I had the
money.” She dimpled charmingly.
“Mummy’s third husband was
ever so wealthy, you see. So here
we are.”

Redfern stubbed out his cigar-
ette and hitched his chair closer.

WO HOURS LATER they
heard a clamor outside.
“Thank heaven!” said Miss
Garney, putting down the carv-
ing knife.

She opened the lock. Cowper
and Di Candia and the general
scrambled in, dragging a chitter-
ing, protesting Fnit on a rope.

“Close the port!” bellowed Di
Candia, and did it himself with-
out waiting for anyone else to
make a move. He leaned against
it, breathing hard. “Well!” he
said, staring at Miss Garney. “I
thought we had a rough time,
but you look like the tag end of
a battle royal.”

Redfern cleared his throat, but
Miss Garney cut in. “Boys will
be boys,” she elucidated. “What

132

happened? How did it work?”

“Oh, splendid, splendid!” said
General Glick happily. “There’s
a complete change of plan, dear
girl. The most fabulous bit of
luck, really! We — ”

“Save your maundering for a
little later,” snapped Cowper, ty-
ing the squirming Fnit to a hull
brace. “Let’s get out of here.”

“Oh, right,” said the general
agreeably, and Di Candia snap-
ped a salute and sat before the
control board.

He kicked the ship off the
ground, balancing it on its t^il,
drove it staggeringly off for one
minute to what Redfern guessed
to be north, then delicately set
it down again. Di Candia had a
radar screen to navigate by; the
rest of those in the ship had
nothing. But Redfern had the no-
tion they’d gone not more than a
mile from the previous landing
site. It was a masterly job of
piloting and Redfern looked at
Di Candia with wonder in his
eyes. But even so, the captive
Fnit passed out cold.

Miss Garney made sympathe-
tic noises and knelt beside the
insectoid creature. “Leave him
alone,” Cowper ordered. “He’s
less trouble that way. Come in
here a moment; I want to bring
you up to date.”

She nodded obediently and
left Redfern with the general, the
major and the Fnit. If he had

GALAXY SCIENCE FICTION

had to choose among them for a
companion, he thought morosely,
it would have been a close deci-
sion, but he would have given it
to the Fnit.

The general took the oppor-
tunity to gloat: “A masterly rear-
guard action, Mr. Redfern! In-
deed, Rommel’s Afrika Korps had
nothing to teach us. A quick
pounce and we secure our cap-
tive; a beautiful disengage* and
we’re on our way to the ship, with
the little roaches chasing after
us and the schooner in sight,
what? And once aboard the
schooner and — ”

Redfern said: “What the devil
are you up to? Kidnaping?
Don’t you realize the State De-
partment will have your hide
for it?”

G ENERAL Glick actually put
one finger alongside his nose.
“Perhaps there is more to it than
meets the eye, Mr. Redfern.”
“There better be,” snarled Red-
fern. He was just beginning to get
upset; things had moved too
quickly for him to react as fast
as they occurred. “You idiots
think you can move in on a
planet and throw your weight
around without knowing a thing
about what makes the inhabitants
tick. Look at the Fnit! See the
golden bands on his foreleg? That
means it’s royalty — high royal-
ty! There are four bands on that

one, and even the king, the one
they call the Glow, only has five!
Why, they’ll rip you limb from
limb if they catch you!”

The general chuckled ponder-
ously. Redfern, disgusted had
stamped over to the viewport and
looked out. It was nearly dark.
That was the only good thing, he
told himself; the Fnits wouldn’t
come out at night even to rescue
royalty. But after the darkness
would follow the dawn; and
when the dawn came . . .

He rubbed his neck uncon-
sciously, feeling a sudden pain
where the neck-clamps had been.
If they were considerate enough
merely to pillory and burn us, he
thought.

But, he decided, it was not
hopeless. The Fnits would un-
doubtedly be out for blood. But
the humans were in the ship and
the ship was in shape for flight.
Nothing could stop them — if
things got as rough as they surejly
would — from pushing their Fnit
captive out of the lock and tak-
ing off for calmer worlds. He
winced at the thought of aban-
doning his own ship, but maybe
some day, when things cooled
down, he could come back for it.
Or, better, send someone for it.
At any rate, they could surely
get away with their lives, as long
as they stayed in the ship.

Cowper and the girl came back
from the private sections of the

WITH REDFERN ON CAPELLA XII

133

ship. “All right,” Cowper said to
Di Candia and General Glick.
“We’re set.” And he put a hand
to the baselock door.

“Hey!” yelped Redfern in dis-
may, as the other three men
tramped out. “They’ll tear you
to pieces! Where the devil do you
think you’re going?”

Cowper looked at him coldly.
“To the Fnit city, of course,” he
said, and closed the door behind
him.

1%/ITSS GARNEY said waspish-
ly, “Now, Redfern, none of
those tricks again!”

“Don’t worry!” he snapped.
“I’ve got other things on my
mind. Do you know what the
Fnits will do to those men? Good
Lord, woman, you can’t get away
with kidnaping! Even if we es-
cape alive, we can’t go home —
we’d spend the rest of our lives
in jail for molesting natives!”
“Oh, I think not,” Miss Garney
said lightly. “Mr. Redfern, you
worry too much.”

“But kidnaping — ”

“Now, please,” she said matern-
ally, “we don’t tell you how to
run your business, so why should
you tell us how to run ours? I
don’t deny that Sir Vivian had
something like kidnaping in mind
originally. But, as you say, it
does have its illegal aspect and
as things turned out, this is much
better.”

“Better how?”

Miss Garney hesitated, then
looked conspiratorial. “Mr. Cow-
per would be furious, but — Well,
you see, we may not have spent
a year studying the Fnits as you
did, but we did manage to make
a few friends. And we discovered
that the Glow was about to be
married and Sir Vivian saw the
possibilities in it at once. Why
should we not, he said, get the
Glow’s bride aboard our ship?
We could then negotiate with
the Glow. We want trade privi-
leges; he wants his wife. A simple
exchange.” She beamed. “Wasn’t
it clever of Sir Vivian?”

Redfern gasped: “You mean
that this Fnit is — ■”

“Oh, no,” she said reassuringly.
“Not at all. It was the most won-
derful bit of luck. Our Fnit con-
tact gave us an excellent picture
of the Glow’s bride and of course,
thanks to you, we knew where
the harem was. So they all went
in to get her and — ” Miss
Garney blushed prettily — “Mr.
Cowper said they found her all
right, and she was in the most
compromising situation. With this
one right here! Imagine, Mr. Red-
fern! Practically a queen, on the
very eve of her marriage to the
Glow, and she allows herself to
have a common, vulgar — ”

“Wait a minute,” Redfern
begged hoarsely. “What was the
bit of luck?”

134

GALAXY SCIENCE FICTION

“Why, you can see that, can’t
you, Mr. Redfern? Sir Vivian is
going to see the Glow, to tell him
that we broke up this affair and
have the fellow here, for him to
do with as he will; and surely the
Fnit’s gratitude will — ”

Redfern had to swallow. He
couldn’t speak, but he made a
violent gesture and Miss Garney
stopped, staring at him. At last
he got it out in a horrified voice:
“Miss Garney, didn’t your con-
tact tell you that the Fnits have
three sexes?”

TT TOOK HER a moment to
get her breath. “You mean,”
she gasped, “they were all three
of them going to — Why, the
dirty little creatures! Good heav-
ens, Mr. Redfern, if I had known
it was going to be anything like
this, I certainly would never
have — ”

“Shut up! Let me think!” He
stared at the captive Fnit, now
conscious again and staring un-
readably back at him out of
faceted eyes. Even the general’s
original half-witted plan wouldn’t
work now, he realized; they had
a fine Fnit captive for trading
purposes — but the Fnits had
the general, the major and Mr.
Cowper.

“We’ll just have to bluff it out,”
he said at last. “The question is,
do you want to come with me or
stay here?”

“Come with you where?”

“Into the Fnit city. Your
friends will be just about ready
for a barbecue by now; if some-
body doesn’t get in there on the
double, it’ll be too late.”

Miss Garney said hastily: “Oh,
I’m coming with you! You cer-
tainly wouldn’t dream of leaving
me here with that, would you?”
Redfern felt wistful. Staying
with a single Fnit seemed so close
to Paradise in his eyes, compared
with invading a hostile city full
of them. But there wasn’t any
choice. They bound the captive
more securely, Miss Garney
found weapons for them, and
they left.

It was all but dark, and dis-
tant Capella made reddish shad-
ows all along the route to the
city. At any rate, Redfern knew
where the city was. It wouldn’t
be more than an hour’s tramp to
get there; in fact, they would pass
almost beside his own rocket,
where he had left it — so miser-
ably long before! — in his ill-
fated expedition that had wound
up with him in the stocks, ready
for burning.

Maybe, he thought, they would
be able to stop off at his own
ship. It wasn’t a patch on the
“syndicate’s” ship — ancient
rocket tube with auxiliaries,
against the trim, compact Go-
lightly drive that Miss Garney’s
money had bought; a single com-

WITH REDFERN ON CAPELLA

XII

135

partment instead of the plush
fittings of the bigger ship. But it
was his own. And if he boarded
it, there was nothing to stop him
from taking off, possibly with
Miss Garney, and leaving the
idiotic male members of the syn-
dicate to the fate they had richly
earned — nothing, that is, but
his conscience.

But he didn’t have to argue
with his conscience. The red-
tinged shadows were scary but
empty — all except one. And
that one held a dozen armed,
twittering Fnits; and they were
all over Redfern and the girl in
the twinkling of an eye; and
when the “rescue party” reached
the Fnit city, it was in a cocoon
of chains.’

1 1 ’HEY WERE sweating pro-
fusely by the time they got
to the Chamber of the Glow —
only partly because of the muggy
damp warmth of the Fnit cities.

If Redfern and the girl were
in a cocoon of chains, the major,
the general and Mr. Cowper were
entombed. They were in a row
before a sort of balcony hanging
from the rock wall and in the
balcony was the Glow of All the
Fnits. Looking at him, Redfern
knew for the first time why he
had that title. He actually glowed.
There was a faint radiance all
about him — radioactivity?
More likely some chemical effect

136

— bioluminescence, like the
greenish light of a glowworm.
Only this was pure white.

There was a Fnit translator
below him, looking threateningly
at the newcomers. “Why, Walter,”
exclaimed Miss Garney. “I didn’t
know you were connected with
the — ”

“Silence!” chittered the Fnit.
“It is not possible for you to
speak before the Glow!”

“Not possible? Why, Walter,
after all the sugar I’ve given you!”
Three Fnits advanced on her.
She stopped scolding the transla-
tor and only shook her head rue-
fully. “These Fnits,” she said dis-
approvingly.

The Glow began to speak, and
the sound was like the magnified
voice of crickets in a summer
night. He paused and the inter-
preter Miss Garney had named
Walter said:

“You are to die for abducting
the para-wife of the Glow. Is it
of interest to you what the man-
ner of your death may be?”

“Oh, very much,” piped up
General Glick, wriggling in his
chain-mail mummy shroud. “You
aborigines are always terribly
clever about that sort of thing,
aren’t you? Why, once we lost a
subaltern to the Pathans and
when they returned his body, it
was — ”

“Silence!” twittered the Fnit
again. “Hear your death. It is fit

GALAXY SCIENCE FICTION

that you should serve the One
you abducted. Since she is a para-
female, a receiver of eggs, you
shall receive the grubs from her
eggs, until they hatch.”

Redfern, with horrid recollec-
tions of bloated beetles bearing
the young of digger wasps on
Earth, croaked: “Wait a minute!
Let’s talk business. You can’t kill
us; you’d never find the — the
para-wife, or whatever you call
her.”

Colloquy between the transla-
tor and the Glow; the translator
broke into English to say: “It is
not so, we correct you. We know
the para-female is in the great
ship, and we know that you
walked from the great ship to
here, and thus it must be near.
We have only to look for her.”

“But it’s night!” cried Redfern.
“You know how we Earthmen
are — we go about in the night
and when it’s cold and all the
time. Why, our ships are as cold
as the air outside at night; she’ll
freeze. It won’t do you any good
to find her if she freezes, will it?”

TTIS COMMENT caused a
frenzy of chirping. It dis-
turbed the Glow; he rose on all
eight legs and rasped horrend-
ously at the captives; The trans-
lator said:

“You have spoken the truth.
If the para-female is exposed to
the night air, she will perish.

Therefore we shall kill you imme-
diately.”

“Hold it!” Redfern yelled as
the Glow twittered at the Fnit
guards. “Don’t you want to save
her?”

“It is impossible,” the transla-
tor explained. “You have said
that she will freeze, and it will
do us no good to find her when
she is frozen. We cannot go out
to rescue her, and if we could,
she would not survive the trip
back to the city.” He made a
motion with his mandibles, the
Fnit equivalent of a philosophical
shrug. “It would have been more
useful to have you receive the
grubs,” he said regretfully, “but
without the para-female, that is
impossible, too, and so — ” He
beckoned meaningfully to the
guards.

“But we can save her!”

The interpreter asked curious-
ly, “How?”

“We can heat our ship if we
wish, you know. Just allow us to
go back to the ship and we’ll
warm it up. In the morning, you
can come and get her.”

The translator made the
equivalent of a nod. “Very inter-
esting,” he said. “No.”

“But why?” Redfern demanded.

“The Glow in his wisdom sees
that you will escape. It is bet-
ter that the para-female should
die than that you should escape.
There are other para-females.”

WITH REDFERN ON CAPEllA XII

137

“We promise we won’t escape,”
Redfern said desperately. “We — ”
He stopped short, mouth open.
“Well?” asked the Fnit after
a moment.

Redfern swallowed. “May I —
may I talk to the Glow for a
moment? Alone?”

“It is not possible,” said the
translator. “The Glow does not
speak English, you see, so that
if you — ”

“I mean alone except for you.
Without the other humans.”

Miss Garney warned: “Mr.

Redfern, I certainly hope you
aren’t trying to sell us out.”
Redfern didn’t have to answer
that, because the Glow rose ma-
jestically on all of his legs and
twittered in a commanding tone.
The Fnit guards picked up Miss
Garney and the men and bore
them, chains clanking, outside.

The translator said: “You may
speak.”

TT HAD BEEN a lie, of course;

the ship’s heaters kept it well
above the temperature of the am-
bient air. But Redfern was shiv-
ering by the time he got there
and he turned them up a notch.

The Fnit para-female chittered
furiously at him. He said: “Don’t
worry about a thing. The old man
will be here in the morning.”

He shucked the parka and
gloves and stared moodily at the
control board. Nothing could

stop him from kicking the Fnit
out the baselock, warming up the
Golightly drive and lifting gently
off the surface of Capella XII in
a gentle cat’s-cradle of magnetic
force lines. Less than three weeks
and he’d be home . . .

He sighed and contemplated
without much confidence the gul-
libility of the Fnits. If only Miss
Garney, ethereal and adorable
Miss Garney, were here with
him! But the Glow had refused
to let anyone else come along to

138

GALAXY SCIENCE FICTION

j'V; .. •’

flMl

“rescue” the Fnit para-female; he
wanted the others as hostages.

Redfern stretched out on the
padded navigator’s couch. He was
so keyed up, he realized dismally,
that it would be impossible for
him to get to sleep; he would no
doubt spend the whole long
Capellan night worrying and
brooding and . . .

He woke up with the clatter
of insectoid feet in the baselock
scratching at his eardrums. A
Fnit face peered curiously into

the ship, disappeared, and was
replaced by the whitely gleaming
face of the Glow himself. The
Glow sprang to the side of his
para-bride, and there was a mad
chittering and clattering of fond-
ly caressing arthropod limbs as
the lovers were reunited.

Redfern breathed again. Be-
hind the Glow were other Fnits,
and with them were the general,
the major, Mr. Cowper — and
last, and emphatically complain-
ing, Miss Garney. The Fnit Glow

WITH REDFERN ON CAPELLA XII

139

had kept his word. Redfern be-
gan to feel slightly happier as he
stood up and rustily began to
walk toward the newcomers.

“ — know that I am absolutely
no good in the morning without
my tea,” Miss Garney was tell-
ing everyone within earshot. “And
still they drag me, utterly drag
me, here, without even a decent
word!” She caught sight of Red-
fern and her tone from hot rage
became ice. “Ah! Your little
scheme didn’t work, eh? Couldn’t
manipulate the Golightly con-
trols, is that it? So you were not
able to make your escape at our
expense after all, were you?”

T> EDFERN had incredulously
-*-*• opened his mouth to answer
and then remembered the Fnits.
He turned to the translator.
“Everything all right?”

The translator said: “It so ap-
pears. You are sure you do not
wish to change your mind? There
will be many grubs and this para-
female is small . .

“Thanks, no. Let’s get on with
it.”

The translator said philosoph-
ically: “Then let it be as you
request. Come, the Glow will ac-
company us to watch the spec-
tacle of your burning.”

“Burning?” cried Miss Garney.
“But I thought — they’ve got
the Fnit back — I mean — ”
“Burning,” said the translator.

“Let us go to the pyre.”

Redfern led the way, well out
of range of Miss Garney’s com-
plaining voice. Beside him, the
translator twittered unendingly,
but Redfern was hardly listening.
They came to the cleft in the
hills where his own old rocket
was nestled on its tail-pads and
he scrambled aboard, the transla-
tor following awkwardly.

It was like being home again.
He touched the walls and bat-
tered control panel lovingly. He
ran his fingers over the jet keys
and patted the familiar naviga-
tional books in the lock-shelf over
the controls. There was the gray
cover of Hypertrails, giving
course settings for every star; the
Rocket Engineer’s Handbook; the
Digest of Interstellar Law; Hig-
gins’ Astronauts’ Companion.

He took down the gold-em-
bossed volume of Higgins senti-
mentally and let it fall open.
There were the remembered pin-
ups, just as he had last seen them
— full-color stereoscopic views
of the most delectable beauties of
the Solar System. How wise
of the Astrogational Board to
make Higgins required equip-
ment for solitary navigators! And
yet how these great beauties
palled into insignificance, Red-
fern thought fondly, compared
with the flesh-and-blood loveli-
ness of —

He swallowed and took a closer

140

GALAXY SCIENCE FICTION

look at the pinups, just as the
rest of the party came panting
and arguing into the airlock. He
glanced up at Miss Garney and
unbelievingly again at the pinups.

Something was wrong some-
where, he thought in horror. It
didn’t occur to Redfern that he
had been fifteen months in space
and that even the Wicked Witch
of the North would have looked
attractive to his woman-starved
eyes. He had forgotten how much
more attractive the soft, supple
flesh of youth might be than the
set, determined lines of Miss
Garney’s face.

All he knew was that here
were the pinups, and here was
Miss Garney, and somehow he
had made a terrible mistake.

r T»HE TRANSLATOR was chit-
tering: “It is complete. You
will now combust yourselves ac-
cording to our pact.”

Redfern ignored the yelps from
the rest of the human party. “All
right, let’s get at it.”

“One moment,” chirped the
Fnit. “The Glow has asked that
I remind you of your undertak-
ings. Firstly, you have stated that
it would be inconvenient to you
to die as we proposed — that is,
with the grubs of the Glow’s fe-
male in your flesh.”

“Very inconvenient,” Redfern
agreed.

“And secondly, that you under-

take to burn yourselves to death,
complete with this structure in
which we are presently talking.”

“Right,” said Redfern.

“It is strange to the Glow that
this metal should burn. He does
not doubt your word, but he
must protect himself. You have
promised to go up in flame for
him, and if you do not do so,
there will be steps taken.”

“Oh, we’ll go up in flame, all
right,” promised Redfern.

“But,” insisted the translator,
“if you do not, then, thirdly, the
Glow reminds you that there are
twenty-six other humans on the
planet. If you should cheat our
justice, it is they who will receive
the grubs in your place. All of
them. Now you may proceed.”
And the Fnit clambered back-
ward out of the lock.

Redfern slammed the lock and
dogged it. General Glick protest-
ed : “See here, this ship won’t
burn, sir! If you think we will be
a party to — ”

“Drop dead,” said Redfern
moodily. “But strap yourselves in
first.” He didn’t even look over
his shoulder to see if they had
done so. Let them get banged
around a bit, he thought savagely,
and put his fingers on the main-
drive rocket controls.

There was a cough and a roar
and a rumbling scream, and
every movable object in the
cabin shook and slid about as

WITH REDFERN ON CAPELLA XII

141

they drove up from the surface
of Capella XII.

Forty minutes later, they were
orbiting around the planet and
Redfern began coaxing his an-
cient auxiliaries to ease them into
hyperspace for the long trip
home.

The four others in the cramped
cabin rubbed their bruises and
screamed at him, singly and in
chorus. Redfern gave them the
silence of his back.

G ENERAL Glick’s bass roar,
rumbling under the voices of
the others, was raging: “ — most
disgraceful conduct I have ever
observed in my life, sir! Didn’t
you hear what the Fnit said?
Our fellow human beings! Be-
trayed! Left to perish most foully!
What will they say at the Club?
For make no mistake, sir, this
will be found out. Massacred,
every human being on Capella
XII, to save your craven skin!
And then we flee like cowardly
babes in this rattletrap, when our
own ship is thrice as big and
faster and — ”

“Don’t even talk to him, Sir
Vivian,” Miss Garney advised
coldly. “He isn’t worth it.”

“Eh,” said the general after a
pause. “I suppose you’re right.
But just to think,” he went on
morosely, from his hammock,
“that my name, the name of Gen-
eral Sir Vivian Mowgli-Glick,

should be linked with a pusillani-
mous, chicken-hearted, black
deed like that!”

Mr. Cowper said: “Newborns,
General. What can you expect?”
“I suppose that’s it,” the gen-
eral agreed moodily. “Takes
time to develop a real code,
what? Let him live a half dozen
lives or so, like you and me and
Miss — ”

“General!” cried the girl.

“Oh, sorry,” mumbled the gen-
eral. They went on like that and
Redfern, doggedly busy with his
auxiliaries, smiled coldly to him-
self. So she was as ancient as the
general, was she? Thank heaven,
he told himself virtuously, that
he had known from the first she
wasn’t worth pursuing. The im-
pudent nerve of these zombies!
Taking up space that later gen-
erations deserved to have — and
blaspheming him for saving the
lives they had no right to!

There was a clunk and the
wavering lines of force came into
phase. The stars winked out in
the viewplate and they were in
featureless hyperspace.

Redfern sighed, and set course,
and turned to face his guests.

“We’re on our way,” he told
them. “Now do you want to listen
to what I have to say?”

“No!” said the general, the
major and Mr. Cowper. What
Miss Garney said was: “Beast!”
“Suit yourself,” Redfern told

GALAXY SCIENCE FICTION

them. “But you’re on my ship
and I’ll thank you to mind your
manners.”

“On your ship, are we?”
shrieked Miss Garney. “And
whose fault is that, I’d like to
know? Why couldn’t we have
taken our own ship — I mean
assuming we were going to leave
the other Earthmen to that horri-
ble death?”

Redfern said, with the last bit
of his patience: “We couldn’t take
your ship because I didn’t want
to leave the others to a horrible
death.”

A T LEAST he had their inter-
est. They glared at him and
Major Di Candia said: “Do you
suppose the fellow means any-
thing by that?”

“Of course not!” said Miss
Garney. “It’s only a cheap lie to
make us forgive him — not that
we ever will.”

“Ah, why do I waste my time
talking to you?” Redfern asked
disgustedly. “Look, what kind of
drive did your ship have?”

“Full Golightly,” Miss Garney
said proudly. “Magnetic warp
throughout, even for planetside
landings. It cost nearly — ”

“Never mind what it cost.”
Redfern rapped the hull of his
own ship. “This one’s a rocket.
Now do you see the difference?”
“Certainly I see the difference,”
snapped Miss Garney. “It will

take us twice as long to get home
— to say nothing of the fact that
the five of us will be huddled in
this little rathole of a cabin the
whole way!”

“No,” said Redfern. “The dif-
ference is that yours was not a
rocket. I arranged with the Glow
for us to incinerate ourselves, as
you perhaps heard the Fnit trans-
lator say. It was the only thing
we could do; would you have
preferred to take the place of
the Fnit para-female you so clev-
erly kidnaped — ” They didn’t
even have the grace to blush, he
saw unbelievingly — “and have
baby Fnits hatching in your
bodies? Maybe you would, but
I wouldn’t.”

“But the Earthmen, sir!” snap-
ped Sir Vivian. “You’ve betrayed
them!”

Redfern sighed. “I promised
the Glow he could watch us go
up in flame. And what did he
see?”

“Why — he saw us escaping.”

“No!” said Redfern. “He saw
the wash of flame from our
rockets. He’s just a Fnit, remem-
ber, and they’ve never seen a
rocket land — mine is the only
one on the whole planet and I
landed at night, when the Fnits
are tucked away. So he saw us
go up in flame — literally! We’re
burned up — as far as they know.
The Glow is satisfied. The hu-
mans are safe. We’re on our way

WITH REDFERN ON CAPELLA XII

143

home. And now — ” he added —
“if you will kindly form a single
line and pucker up, ladies first,
I shall extend my left foot.”
They might not be bright, he
thought to himself admiringly,
but they certainly were good and
stubborn. It was nearly an hour
before they all got it straight that
the remaining Earthmen on
Capella XII would not be massa-
cred, and they themselves were
safe enough, and somebody could
even go back and pick up their
ship, sooner or later, so that all
they had lost was their time. And
then each one of them manfully
apologized.

OOD show, really,” burbled
the general, the last to get
the thing straight in his mind. He
dragged his hammock closer to
Redfern’s. “Brilliant,” he went on,
tying the rope-end into position
for a nice, comfortable chat.
“Made it look like a blasted sut-
tee, what? I’ve not seen the like
of it since the old days in India.
Reminds me of a time in Hydera-
bad — ’86, it must have been.”
“Excuse me,” Redfern inter-
rupted. “Got to check the auxili-
aries.” It looked as if it was going
to be a long voyage, he thought
drearily, staring at the perfectly
automatic controls of the auxili-
aries and wishing his father had
got enough money from the bank
for a larger ship.

144

“Mr. Redfern?”

He turned with a start. The
voice was meltingly sweet; Miss
Garney was smiling dewily.

“Dear boy,” she said, “I — I
just wanted to say that you were
perfectly splendid. I do hope
you’ll forgive us for the terrible
way we acted. And,” she added
archly, “I certainly hope you
won’t pay too much attention to
— well, what Sir Vivian said.
You know, about — uh — age.”

“Of course not,” Redfern said
glassily, watching her as a bird
might watch a python.

She reached daintily across
him to pick up the volume of
Higgins. She glanced at it, tit-
tered, and looked coyly at Red-
fern.

“Naughty,” she reproved and,
before he could stop her, dropped
the book of pinups into the dis-
posal chute. “You won’t need
these, dear boy. We’ll be together
for a good long time, won’t we?
And, really, don’t you think that
it never hurts if a woman is just
the teentsiest bit older? Especial-
ly for a man as experienced as
you?”

Fifty-six days, he calculated,
staring at the chugging auxili-
aries. Fifty-six days with the gen-
eral, the major, Mr. Cowper . . .
and Miss Garney.

It was going to be . a very long
voyage.

— CHARLES SATTERFIELD

GALAXY SCIENCE FICTION

Looking For Us, Professor?

"Hmm, yes. I was just cogitating upon the causes of GALAXY
Science Fiction's phenomenal growth in popularity."

"And that needs an explanation, Professor?"

"From a socio-psychological viewpoint, most definitely. To
what do you attribute the constant increase of interest?"

"Well . . . let's try it this way. Professor. Suppose we ask the
questions and you answer them."

"So? A bit unusual, but go right ahead."

"Do you think atomic doom is the only future for mankind?"

"Not exactly, but the newspapers and the commentators—"

"Of course. Well, we SHOW other possible futures. Do you
believe we will be able to leave the Earth?"

"Eventually, perhaps. But not in our lifetime."

"We don't agree. Assuming you're right, though, isn't that all
the more reason to want to know what we'll find on other
planets, Professor?"

"I think I see what you mean."

"Can we achieve immortality?"

"Ah. Hum. I've often wondered."

"And travel to different eras in time?"

"That would be exciting."

"And you've been trying to discover why GALAXY is growing
so popular? Every idea we've mentioned— and a lot more, be-
sides— is treated dramatically and vividly in GALAXY! You really
live them!"

"Umm. How do I subscribe? After all, one shouldn't resist a
trend, should one? Heh, heh!"

"Just fill out the coupon— or make out your own order and
send it in. The coupon's for your convenience, not ours. And now
you'll be one of us!"

Send me 1 year subscription to GALAXY $3.50—2 years $6.00

ENCLOSED FIND

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ADDRESS

CITY STATF

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Not Us !

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thing that is possible — and can make a good story — goes
into the pages of GALAXY Science Fiction.

Doomsday is only one possible future out of many:

The conquest of other planets . , .

Invasions of Earth . , ,

Other dimensions . . .

Immortality . . .

Strange and exciting future civilizations that
have their roots right in the present . . .

You’ll find all these and a lot more in GALAXY, the
magazine of ideas brought vividly to life!

for 12 convincing issues, send $2.50
or $6.00 for 24 issues,

GALAXY Publishing Corp.

421 Hudson Street * New York 14, N. Y.

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